republicanism. After the only British experience of a republic, the Commonwealth of 1649–60, republicanism did not have its own party nor was it a major constituent of the programme of other parties or movements. Unlike most of Europe and America, where republicanism was regarded as a prerequisite of democracy, the extension of popular government in Britain was attained without revolution or overthrow of the monarchy. Nevertheless, republican sentiment was common among British radicals in the late 18th and 19th cents. Supporters of the American and French revolutions and admirers of Thomas Paine were usually republicans, as also were the plebeian radicals of the 1820s and 1830s, notably the followers of Richard Carlile, who published the Republican from 1819 to 1826. Some chartists were openly republican, as witness two late chartist journals, C. G. Harding's Republican (1848) and W. J. Linton's English Republic (1851–5). Periods of monarchical unpopularity stimulated republicanism. This was so during the Regency and again in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when a group of Liberal MPs, including Sir Charles Dilke and Joseph Chamberlain, revived the republican cause, fuelled by Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life, the cost of the royal family, and the scandals associated with the prince of Wales. At the same time popular republicanism was spread by Charles Bradlaugh and the secularist movement; and a short-lived journal, the Republican, appeared in 1870. Republican clubs were formed in London and throughout the country during 1870–2. The labour and socialist movements of the 1880s and 1890s were republican in principle. But, as with earlier radical and reform movements, republicanism was only one of the constituents and not a major part of the programme. British republicanism has been a matter of principle or sentiment rather than an issue of practical politics.

John F. C. Harrison