Rhetoric in the Age of British Cicero: Two Parliamentary Anthologies in Britain in the Early Nineteenth Century
The Japanese Political Science Association, Tokyo, Japan, Sep, 2023
CHIHIRO KARIYA, PhD 
Abstract
How was classical rhetoric, developed in ancient Greece, received and employed in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain? This paper examines the emergence of the term “British Cicero” and the first anthologies of British parliamentary oratory, notably The British Cicero (1808) by Thomas Browne and Eloquence of the British Senate (1807) by William Hazlitt. While Browne argued, drawing on Cicero, that Britain’s free constitution provided the ideal conditions for eloquence, Hazlitt compiled parliamentary speeches to expose the failure of contemporary MPs to represent the voice of the nation. By analysing these anthologies, the paper clarifies how rhetoric and eloquence were understood in this period and highlights their close relationship with ideas of liberty and representative government.