European-Americans, and, in his second advance on St Augustine, Oglethorpe found it appropriate to adopt some of his allies’ military techniques. Their value had emerged in the earlier attempt on the Spanish base. Sweet’s book also throws light on the problems that affected the relationship between the Trustees and the colonists. As the latter became established, they stepped up their pleas for relief from the burdens imposed on them by the administration overseas. The Trustees, however, denied repeated requests to lift the regulations on land ownership, alcohol consumption and slave usage. In the end the Trustees surrendered the charter. A fine book on an instructive episode. Jeremy Black University of Exeter A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846. Boyd Hilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006. xxv + 757 pp. 16 illus. £30.00 hb. 978-0-19-822830-1. Tombstone volumes of this type often go wrong because they have to cover so much, or intimidate by their length. My mother indeed looked at this book and said it was too long for her. A pity, because this is a particularly fine example of the type, wide- ranging in scope, ably organised, judicious in reflection and throughout interesting. For me the test is not the pace on those sectors with which I am comfortable, but the subjects that generally do not excite, and here again it is pleasant to report that Hilton pulls it off. He is as fair a guide on class and ideology, the latter covered in a highly comprehensive manner, as he is on the nuts and bolts of politics which take up four of the ten chapters. The latter emphasis is defended on the grounds that the late eighteenth-century revolutions had led to the flourishing of political ideology and that this had politicised society as a whole, a remark that can be critically probed, but that offers a cogent explanation. If there is a criticism, it is that the local and regional dimensions, while not neglected, are underplayed. Furthermore, a book on England might have something more to say on relations with Scotland and Wales, although Ireland gets good coverage. The writing is arresting – ‘Disraeli crucified Peel in 1846, but Peel was more than a little willing to shed his own mediatorial blood’; and there is a fine grasp of general trends. For example, Hilton addresses the mid-nineteenth- century shift in mood, linking social groups, politics and ideas in a clear fashion. Eighteenth-century scholars will welcome the clear narrative and find interesting a book that emphasises modernity and looks forward instead of stressing continuity. Indeed, Hilton starts from the premise that neo-conservative (‘Throne and Altar’) ideology, far from representing an ancien régime, was a new development following the American and French Revolutions and that it was a reaction against the ‘progressive’ ideologies associated with those events. This is a valuable perspective, although it underplays the impact of the end of the Stuart challenge and the reconciliation of dynasty with political Anglicanism that followed George III’s accession. Hilton correctly argues that it is misleading to suggest that political allegiance was mainly a case of material self-interest. Instead, as he suggests, Pitt theYounger won the support of capitalists as much because his rhetoric flattered their self-esteem as anything, while high farming sometimes appealed or repelled for cultural rather than economic reasons. The eighteenth century is now covered in this series, with Julian Hoppit’s A Land of Liberty? England 1689-1727, followed by Paul Langford’s A Polite and Commercial People. 118 BOOK REVIEWS © 2009 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies