[Book Review] Parliamentarism: From Burke to Weber

William Selinger’s Parliamentarism: from Burke to Weber aims to redefine our understanding of what it means to live in a free state. It displaces the concept of “democracy” as a (supposedly) central concern for a range of canonical nineteenth-century authors, and demonstrates that another concept, that of “parliamentarism”, stood at the core of many European liberal writers’ quest for liberty. Selinger shows that Montesquieu’s description of a “balanced” English constitution protected by a system of checks and balances was challenged by a number of contemporary observers of British politics (including Jean-Louis de Lolme and Edmund Burke), who elaborated rival accounts emphasizing instead the dominant position of a powerful representative assembly which mirrored the nation it represented. The resulting doctrine of “parliamentarism”, the book demonstrates through a series of case studies that include Tocqueville, Mill and Weber, subsequently became the “dominant paradigm of a free state across Europe” (p. 9) in the nineteenth century

Results From the Global Rheumatology Alliance Registry

Funding Information: We acknowledge financial support from the ACR and EULAR. The ACR and EULAR were not involved in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. ACR Open Rheumatology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American College of Rheumatology.Objective: Some patients with rheumatic diseases might be at higher risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We aimed to develop a prediction model for COVID-19 ARDS in this population and to create a simple risk score calculator for use in clinical settings. Methods: Data were derived from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance Registry from March 24, 2020, to May 12, 2021. Seven machine learning classifiers were trained on ARDS outcomes using 83 variables obtained at COVID-19 diagnosis. Predictive performance was assessed in a US test set and was validated in patients from four countries with independent registries using area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. A simple risk score calculator was developed using a regression model incorporating the most influential predictors from the best performing classifier. Results: The study included 8633 patients from 74 countries, of whom 523 (6%) had ARDS. Gradient boosting had the highest mean AUC (0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67-0.88) and was considered the top performing classifier. Ten predictors were identified as key risk factors and were included in a regression model. The regression model that predicted ARDS with 71% (95% CI: 61%-83%) sensitivity in the test set, and with sensitivities ranging from 61% to 80% in countries with independent registries, was used to develop the risk score calculator. Conclusion: We were able to predict ARDS with good sensitivity using information readily available at COVID-19 diagnosis. The proposed risk score calculator has the potential to guide risk stratification for treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies, that have potential to reduce COVID-19 disease progression.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

James Mill, the Scottish Enlightenment and the Problem of Civil Religion

This article argues for a reassessment of James Mill’s anticlerical, and possibly atheistic, brand of secularism. Mill’s well-known religious scepticism and criticism of the Church of England, it is suggested, have tended to obscure his otherwise dispassionate assessment of religion as a social phenomenon. The article traces Mill’s lifelong belief that religious improvement was a necessary precondition to societal progress, from his first major publication in 1805 to his late advocacy of a tolerant state religion in 1835. In this Mill differed starkly from Bentham, who considered all religious beliefs as harmful and whose utopian utilitarian society was secular rather than tolerant. The article contends that the eighteenth-century Scottish enquiries into human manners and religious progress directly inspired Mill’s lifelong ambition to use religion as a tool to reform manners and create the educated public opinion he believed was indispensable to the enactment of his democratic and utilitarian programme

"Scientific Whigs"? Scottish historians on the French Revolution

The Scottish reception of the French Revolution has usually been considered from the point of view of its influence on the so-called “Burke-Paine” debate. This article examines the impact of the French Revolution in Scotland from a different perspective, by focusing on the writings of the so-called “Scottish historians.” It examines the pre-1789 Scottish narratives of European constitutional history, and argues that the historical thought of Hume, Smith, Robertson, and Millar was misappropriated in the 1790s, as their writings were wrongly used to underpin a “social” interpretation of the fall of the French monarchy

James Mill’s treatment of religion and the <i>History of British India</i>

James Mill’s History of British India (1817) played a major role in re-shaping the English policy and attitudes in India throughout the nineteenth century. This article questions the widely held view that the ‘HBI’ heralded the utilitarian justification of colonisation found for instance in John Stuart Mill’s writings. It suggests that James Mill’s role as a proponent of ‘utilitarian imperialism’ has been overstated, and argues that much of Mill’s criticism of Indian society arose from the continuing influence of his religious education as well as from his links with a network of Presbyterian and Evangelical thinkers. It is only after his death that the colonialist views put forward in the History of British India were re- interpreted in light of his later attachment to utilitarianism

Introduction: Millar and his Circle

This essay examines two anonymous pamphlets that have sometimes been attributed to John Millar: the ‘Letters of Sidney’, and the ‘Letters of Crito’, both published in 1796 by the Scots Chronicle. It outlines the political context for the pamphlets’ publication and the evidence for and against Millar's authorship, and reassesses their contents' significance for our interpretation of Millar's other writings. While the ‘Letters of Crito’ present a classically Foxite critique of Pitt's ministry and Britain's war against revolutionary France, the ‘Letters of Sidney’ put forth a more theoretical defence of property reform based upon a Smithian theory of justice. Yet taken together, the essay demonstrates the pamphlets offer new insights into the political discussions that were taking place in Scottish Foxite Whig circles in the 1790s. They also provide a snapshot of the various ways in which the theories of the Scottish Enlightenment could be used by Millar and his circle of friends and students to interpret the political context of the mid-1790s, as the French Revolution was transforming the political language of its English and Scottish contemporaries

The Scottish Enlightenment and the French Revolution

Historians of ideas have traditionally discussed the significance of the French Revolution through the prism of several major interpretations, including the commentaries of Burke, Tocqueville and Marx. This book argues that the Scottish Enlightenment offered an alternative and equally powerful interpretative framework for the Revolution, which focused on the transformation of the polite, civilised moeurs that had defined the 'modernity' analysed by Hume and Smith in the eighteenth century. The Scots observed what they understood as a military- and democracy-led transformation of European modern morals and concluded that the real historical significance of the Revolution lay in the transformation of warfare, national feelings and relations between states, war and commerce that characterised the post-revolutionary international order. This book recovers the Scottish philosophers' powerful discussion of the nature of post-revolutionary modernity and shows that it is essential to our understanding of nineteenth-century political thought

Edmund Burke, Poland, and the Commonwealth of Europe

This article re-examines Burke's doctrine of intervention by analysing his decades-long interest in the ‘Polish question’. Contrary to the main thrust of existing scholarship, it argues that the French Revolution did not fundamentally transform Burke's assessment of the European state system. Rather, Burke's most famous and controversial 1790s positions on the topic were rehearsed in the previous decades through his practical engagement in long-running eighteenth-century discussions about the Polish state, which acted as a lightning rod for disagreements surrounding the nature and future of European politics. Burke was interested in the Polish state because it raised fundamental questions about the nature of European civilization, the rules of progress, and the conditions for long-lasting peace. The Polish crisis of 1772 led him to reflect on the relationship between internal and external politics, and crystallized his analysis of the Balance of Power as not only the guarantor of continental peace, but also as the very source of the unique ‘spirit’ of European civil society. It was this same framework of analysis that he applied to France in the 1790s, to argue that the expansionist ambitions inherent to democratic republicanism warranted intervention because they threatened the unique nature of European civilization

Democratic struggle or national uprising? The Canadian rebellions in British political thought, 1835–1840

This article argues that the role of the 1837–38 Canadian rebellions in early nineteenth-century British political thought has been under-appreciated. It shows that they were the occasion of major reconceptualizations of two important terms that would later become central to the political lexicon of modern Britain: ‘democracy’ and ‘nationality’. From the perspective of the Tories and Whigs who framed the rebellions in terms of ‘nationality’, the Canadian debate required reconfiguring previous uses of the word, in order to argue that some ‘nationalities’ were more worthy of respect than others, and that protecting ‘nationality’ could be compatible with membership of an imperial, multi-national state. Additionally, it also reinforced previous negative uses of ‘democracy’ by critics of the rebellions relying on familiar tropes inherited from the French Revolution. But the debate also showcased the quickly shifting Radical uses of both words. For the Radicals, who framed the Canadian crisis in terms of ‘democracy’, it provided a platform to deploy emerging Tocquevillian understandings of democracy in the North American context and reintroduce the word in British political discourse. Via the Durham report of 1839, it also established more civic-minded Radical redefinitions of ‘nationality’ as a core argument for British imperialist policy