The Public Square for September 2025

Attention Citizens!

The Reform or Revolution? (1830 to 1832) video is out for the public on YouTube, huzzah! 

I’m going to pick up where I left off last month, looking over some of my earliest notes and drafts and comparing that to what actually ended up in the final video.  The early version of the video is always very different from the final version of the video, and the way that it evolves over time is sometimes interesting.  

As before, I’ll put the relevant timecode in brackets.  

Okay! 

“Grey’s first task as Prime Minister was not an easy one. He needed to get the King on board with what needed to be done.” (17:23)

Looking back at the first draft of this video, I initially had a much stronger emphasis on King William and his inner circle at court, and slightly less of an emphasis on Prime Minister Grey.  As the drafts and the research progressed, it became clear that the only story that mattered was the legislative story, and that the court intrigue and was just a sideshow.  The first versions of the story had a lot more stuff about what King William thought should be done about Reform, and what his advisors were telling him, his personal opinions, moods, ideas, angst, etc.  In the final script there’s very little of that remaining outside of a few key moments.

While I was editing the first draft, I felt that I was in danger of having the video come off as from King William’s POV.  That’s not at all what I wanted.  King William sometimes has this historical reputation as “The Reform King,” but through my research I came to the conclusion that he doesn’t deserve that reputation.  I say it in the video, but it’s worth repeating: King William did not want to do Reform, he was only cracking the door to “reasonable reforms” because the British people were holding a metaphorical gun to his head.  You will find some historical accounts out there (especially in older books) that will applaud King William for “allowing” Reform to happen.  But that’s not what I believe happened.  My research told me that the action came from the legislature, which meant that the video should be from the POV of the legislators.  So as I revised the drafts, I removed stuff about King William and added stuff about more secondary politicians like John Russell and the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel.  

But one thing that was TRAGICALLY lost in the edits was any mention of King William’s wife, Queen Adelaide.  I knew nothing about her before researching this video, but I came away with HOT TAKES.  She was from a small German state, (I just had to look it up again, Saxe-Meiningen,) and she broadly believed that the Prussia had the superior form of government.  She was conservative, traditionalist, and extremely religious.  She believed in Royal Supremacy, and had no tolerance at all for political unrest.  

Adelaide was advising King William during the entire Reform debate, and in my opinion, her advice was 100% wrong.  If, during the protests, King William had said anything that suggested that he supported a more German or Prussian style of government, the monarchy would have been overthrown.  The fact that King William coordinated with Prime Minister Grey in order to get Reform over the finish line meant that he was completely rejecting his wife Adelaide’s politics.  She was awful.  She didn’t believe that the King should have to work with Parliament, she didn’t believe that he should tolerate being disrespected in this way, she didn’t think that Reform was necessary, she didn’t believe in any of it.  

AND YET!  So many things are named after Queen Adelaide, just because she happened to be queen at a pivotal time in world history!  Adelaide, Australia with a population of 1.5 million is named after her.  There’s an Adelaide Island in Antarctica.  There are major “Adelaide Streets” all over the former British colonies, including in Toronto, Brisbane, and London.  Actually, both Londons, now that I think of it.  

She was a British queen who didn’t even believe in British political institutions.   She wanted to turn Britain into Prussia-lite.  She was awful!  Why the hell are there so many places named after her!  Researching this video turned me into an Adelaide Hater.  Honestly, if Toronto or any other city ever wants to rename their Adelaide Street, I’m now 100% on board. 

“Grey selected rising star Whig politician John Russell to take lead on writing the Reform Bill.” (19:03)

[...]

“The truth was that Russell’s Reform Bill was way more radical than anybody was expecting.” (20:15)

This is an example of me yadda-yadda-ing over something and simplifying it for the audience.  When watching a video there are only so many names and characters that people are able to keep in their heads, and so for the sake of simplicity I fudged it a little bit and collapsed the work of several men into one character, John Russell.  The truth was that there was something called the Committee of Four who were in charge of writing the Reform Bill.  They were were Russell, Althorp, Duncannon, and Durham.  So when I say that “Russell’s Reform Bill was way more radical than anybody was expecting,” what I really mean is that “Russell, Althorp, Duncannon, and Durham’s Committee produced a Reform Bill that was way more radical than anybody was expecting.” 

There could have been a version of this video where I included all of the heated debates and back and forth within the Committee of Four and showed how the Reform Bill gradually became more and more radical over time, but instead I just collapsed all of that drama down to a single point and just said “Russell wrote a radical Reform Bill.”

Like I said earlier, it’s important when making these videos not to overwhelm people with names.  A lot has been written about Reform, and so it would be very easy to just rattle off names for the entire video.  While that may work in a book, in an audio/visual medium that can quickly become overwhelming and turn into one big blur.  

So while writing the script I had to decide, “after watching the video, who do I want the audience to remember?”  I came up with 5 names.  King William, Prime Minister Grey (Whig, House of Lords,) John Russell, (Radical Whig, House of Commons,) the Duke of Wellington, (Extreme Conservative, House of Lords,) and Robert Peel (Moderate Conservative, House of Commons.)  Those 5 characters could easily represent every “faction” in the narrative, which makes it much easier for the audience to get a sense of the political dynamics at play.  If I can avoid giving the audience a list of names, and instead simplify it by saying “Robert Peel and the Moderate Conservatives did X,” that’s a win for everybody.

“One Whig MP named Thomas Macaulay rose to speak in Russell’s defence.” (22:30)

In retrospect I should not have named this person when I quoted him.  I worked so hard to limit the number of characters that are named in the video, why am I name dropping random-ass Thomas Macaulay for absolutely no damn reason?  This quote was in my very first draft, and somehow the entire thing just snuck through every single revision without any changes whatsoever.  I should have just said, “One Whig MP rose to speak in Russell’s defence” and left it there.  Looking at it now, I’m dumbfounded.  Oh well!  

“This is kinda getting ahead of ourselves, but based on how the British people would respond to later events, there’s no doubt in my mind that if the vote to pause had passed, somebody would have tried to overthrow the government. I don’t know if they would have succeeded, but they would have tried. One vote from a completely different Britain, and therefore a completely different 19th century.” (25:32)

It’s impossible to defend counterfactual claims like this, but when I wrote this I was specifically thinking about the Bristol Riots.  These broke out immediately after the second attempt at Reform was defeated in the House of Lords.  Bristol was a city of like 100,000, and they burned down the home of the mayor, the home of the top religious official, the prison, the courthouse, and then they went into wealthy neighbourhoods and started burning down mansions.  I didn’t dwell on it for too long in the video, but it was really crazy.  And Bristol as a relatively small city.  

While researching this video, I came to the conclusion that it was just dumb luck that the Bristol Riots happened to break out in Bristol, and not in London.  But it easily could have been London.  In fact, it probably SHOULD have been London.  Only six months later, London would host what I describe as “probably the largest protest in British history.”  Clearly the appetite was there.  

So if the Conservatives in Parliament had extended the timeline by imposing a completely arbitrary “pause” on Reform, my argument is that there would have been significant riots in London.  How big would the riots have been?  On a similar scale to the Bristol Riots, I think.  

But Bristol was a small city.  What’s the “London Version” of burning down the home of the mayor?  Burning down Parliament?  What’s the “London Version” of burning down the home of the top religious official?  Burning down St. James’s Palace?  Grabbing the King and doing God-Knows-What with him?  What’s the “London Version” of burning down wealthy neighbourhoods?  Executing aristocrats?  

That’s what was in my head when I say in the video “there’s no doubt in my mind that if the vote to pause had passed, somebody would have tried to overthrow the government.”  There would have been something like the Bristol Riots, except they would have been exponentially bigger, and they would have been in London.  Not unreasonable to think that “The Bristol Riots, but in London” would have resulted in the government being overthrown.  A very different 19th century.  

But I didn’t want to spend 5-10 minutes on a made up counterfactual that 100% did not happen, so I didn’t include those thoughts in the video.  Instead, I’m kinda like, “guys…just like…believe me…this was a big deal,” lol. 

“But in the aftermath of the crisis, Grey quickly found that Reform opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Certain moneyed and illiberal lobbying groups were powerless in the face actual democratic legitimacy.” (55:35)

With this line I’m specifically referring to the Slavery Lobby, also known as the West India Interest.  A group of mostly Conservative Tories who coordinated as a bloc to oppose any anti-slavery measures.  These politicians either owned slaves personally, or were bought and paid for by extremely wealthy backers who did.  Before Reform, the West India Interest was maybe 10% of the House of Commons, but since they were mostly Conservatives, it was nearly impossible to make any anti-slavery reforms while the Conservatives were in power.  

You might be thinking to yourself, “what about the British cracking down on the transatlantic slave trade in 1807?”  That was the one extremely brief Whig government over a period of 41 years.  And even that was just a half-measure, watered down by the powerful West India Interest.  

What I was hinting at in the video is that most of the politicians who were backed by the West India Interest were only kept in power through open corruption, the very same kind of corruption that I talk about with Old Sarum and Dunwich and the Isle of Wight.  They had very little popular support of their own.  So when there was a wave election and all of these corrupt politicians from corrupt constituencies were washed away, people suddenly looked around and discovered that the West India Interest was mostly gone.  

I didn’t want to get sidetracked explaining all of that in the video.  Structurally, the video felt as if it should be wrapping up, I didn’t want to open a whole new can of worms.  But I also felt that it was important to briefly explain why slavery was immediately on the agenda after the passage of Reform.  So I just said “certain moneyed and illiberal lobbying groups were powerless in the face actual democratic legitimacy” and left it at that, lol.  

I’ve wanted to do a video about the British abolition of slavery for a very long time.  I specifically remember reading Adam Hochchild’s book Bury the Chains (2005) in the year 2018 with the intention of using it as a framework for a video.  That book covers the anti-slavery movement as a grassroots social movement spanning like 40+ years.  After finishing that book I was like “it’s so big, I don’t even know how to approach that, I don’t really see it as a video.”  It took me years to realize that looking at slavery from a strictly political angle would work.  In my mind, if I frame the abolition of slavery as a consequence of Reform, (as I believe it was,) then it works as a video.  So, now that the Reform video is done, I can do a video about the British abolition of slavery.  It’s not the very next video, but it’ll happen eventually. 

Progress Update:

I’ve been working away writing Video #89, which is kind of a spiritual sequel to the “Work” video.  It includes an 8-10 minute section that used to be part of “Work,” which I removed from that video very late in the process.  I remember thinking to myself, “this is barely related to the topic at hand, it should probably just be built out into its own separate video at some point.”  That’s what I’m working on now, I’m trying to build out that 8-10 minute section into its own video.  

It’s coming along.  Right now it’s an absolute mess, but it’s coming along.

I’m saying that the writing is 33% done, but that’s a completely made up number.  The truth is that I’m blindly cutting my way through the writing jungle with a machete.  Am I lost?  No, I’m not lost, I know that if I keep on going in this direction I’ll eventually hit water.  But do I know where I am?  No, haven’t a clue, lol. 

Books I’ve Recently Enjoyed:

• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut

  • I’ve been continuing to pick my way through my Vonnegut blind spots, but I decided to re-read Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) just for the fun of it.  It’s undoubtedly his masterpiece.  If you have no experience with Vonnegut, make a mental note, this is the one that I say you should read at some point in your life.  

    It’s loosely based on Vonnegut’s real-life experience of being held as a prisoner of war during World War 2 and then being bombed by his own country in Dresden.  It’s the rare World War 2 novel that’s unapologetically and unambiguously anti-war, which I find really appealing.  But also it’s a funny and breezy read, which you wouldn’t know from my description two sentences ago.  

    Throughout the novel, Vonnegut occasionally pulls back the narrative curtain and speaks directly to the reader.  I just finished the book a few minutes ago, and despite reading the it before, I had no memory of this direct-to-reader bit near the very end.  It literally gave me goosebumps.  

"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.

And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.

My father died many years ago now - of natural causes. So it goes. He wa a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust."

Films I’ve Recently Enjoyed:

• The Trial (1962)

  • Continuing to pick my way through Orson Welles directed movies that I haven’t seen before, and I was REALLY pleasantly surprised by The Trial (1962).  I remember reading this book ages ago and loving it, although I don’t really remember it that well now.  Based on what I remember, I think the movie switches the order of everything around and invents a bunch of scenes, (including some very strange bits with a supercomputer,) but I thought it was a great adaptation, watched it twice.  I was surprised to read afterward that it’s considered one of his lesser works, kinda a “work-for-hire” job.  Maybe I’m the only person on the planet who would say this, but I would probably rank it #2 right under Citizen Kane (1941).  Loved it.

Music I’ve Recently Enjoyed:

• Vampire Weekend

  • I was listening to Vampire Weekend on shuffle and kinda re-discovered the album Father of the Bride (2019), which I probably hadn’t thought about since it came out.  Quickly turned into my favourite Vampire Weekend album.  Features three duets with Danielle Haim, all three of those songs are great, also really enjoyed re-discovering Stranger and This Life.

    I think the only reason that I started listening to Vampire Weekend on shuffle was because the song Harmony Hall sticks out like a sore thumb in Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) and it made me laugh out loud in the theatre, lol. 

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