The annual Quentin Skinner Lecture, delivered by Dr Max Skjönsberg, in partnership with the Faculty of History, will take place on Friday 6 June 2025.
Registration: Please register here to attend
Time: 11:00 – 18:30 (see the full programme here)
Location: Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP
‘The Spirit of the Constitution’
The British constitution in the eighteenth century was often referred to as one of limited government. But what made it limited? Far from being stable, the meaning of the British constitution in the eighteenth century was changing and contested. This lecture will show that one common interpretation was that the constitution had a spirit. This language has become associated with Montesquieu, but in the eighteenth-century Anglophone world, it was first made popular by the man who instructed Montesquieu about British politics, namely Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. In the Bolingbrokean idiom, the spirit of the constitution, which could be deduced from its logic and its history, was meant to promote freedom.
By focusing on oppositional political discourse in the so-called long eighteenth century, roughly between the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 and the First Reform Act in 1832, this lecture will show that there was a powerful political tradition that placed less emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of parliament and statute, and instead insisted on the idea that there were fundamental laws and principles that limited political power, even when exercised by parliament.
For eighteenth-century reformers, the corruption of the constitution and especially parliament necessitated restoration and reform, which were invariably distinguished from innovation. This lecture will illuminate a tradition of British political writers and reformers who wanted great alteration without desiring anything new.
About the Keynote Speaker
Dr Max Skjönsberg is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education. He is the author of The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and editor of Catharine Macaulay’s Political Writings (2023). His research has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of the History of Ideas, English Historical Review, and Modern Intellectual History. Dr Skjönsberg is the 2025 Quentin Skinner Fellow at CRASSH.
Guest Speakers
- Gaby Mahlberg (University of Newcastle)
- Adela Halo (Hamilton School, University of Florida)
- Felix Waldmann (University of Cambridge)
- Tom Hopkins (University of Cambridge)
- Greg Conti (Princeton University)
- Sylvana Tomaselli (University of Cambridge)
All members of the University are warmly invited to attend. If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us at fellowships@crassh.cam.ac.uk.
