THE BRITISH MONARCHY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Marilyn Morris. Yale Univ. Press. 229 pp. $28.50

As French revolutionaries toppled the Bourbon monarchy, many Britons, including Edmund Burke and Edward Gibbon, worried that their throne might be next. For the British crown, the 18th century had not been the best of times. Jacobites, supporters of the Stuart pretenders, incited rebellions in 1714 and 1745. During their collective reigns (1714–60), George I and George II proved altogether inept at public relations, and they were frequently subjected to satirical attacks. George III lost the American colonies, a defeat that left him so despondent that he considered abdicating. In his influential Rights of Man (1791–92), Thomas Paine lauded the French Revolution and dismissed the British monarchy as useless. The head of the Manchester Constitutional Society declared that Paine "has wounded [the British aristocracy] mortally... and monarchy will not, I think, continue long in fashion."

But the British crown did not fall. Morris, a history professor at the University of North Texas, contends that most of Paine’s admirers favored only parliamentary reform, not abolition of the monarchy. By the end of the 1790s, moreover, "the invasion scare and dread of Bonaparte drew people together in defense of the nation." Britons realized that their monarchical constitutional order protected against both the horrors of the Reign of Terror and the despotism of Napoleon.

While persuasively arguing that most Britons of the 1790s opposed revolutionary change, Morris points out that we should not be too quick to dismiss those who feared that "the French disease" (as Gibbon termed it) might infect Great Britain. Toward the end of the decade, a group of British and Irish republican extremists formed a revolutionary underground in hopes of coordinating a French invasion, an Irish rebellion, and an insurrection in London. Though their plot failed, small bands of revolutionaries sometimes do succeed, as the world has learned in the two centuries since.

Morris gives considerable credit to George III for shoring up the monarchy. He had survived the shame of the American defeat to become "a cultural icon" widely admired for his patriotism, his dedication to the duties of kingship, and his "paternal disposition." A devoted husband and regular churchgoer, George was accessible, often appearing in public with his children and chatting with commoners. Press coverage of the royal family’s activities increased during the decade, and, for the most part, familiarity bred affection. George’s position as "moral exemplar," Morris observes, "eclipsed his political role." Yet charisma and affability are only part of the explanation. Britons, regardless of their feelings for the monarch and the royal family, have always associated the crown with political stability—as much in the 1790s as in the 1990s.

—Stephen Miller