Parliament, Print Culture and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth-Century England

• Published in: Parliamentary history Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 96 - 111
• Main Author: BRADLEY, JAMES E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2007
• ISSN: 0264-2824; 1750-0206
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-0206.2007.tb00631.x

Bradley explores two closely related questions: the extent of the political divisions in the provincial press over the American crisis; and how petitions were understood to bear upon parliament and issues of representation as illustrated in the local press. The questions addressed are the shifting perceptions of the political process during an upheaval like the American revolution and the light that petitioning, as understood in the press, shed on contemporary perceptions of that process.