Debating societies [ Clubs & Societies / Associational culture ]
… Isaac Cruikshank, ‘Debating Society’, Courtesy of Lewis Walpope Library, 795.05.05.01, 1756?-1811?. Abstract Debating societies became well-established institutions in London and provincial cities, catering for the taste for public debate among the lower and middling sorts. Topics could be frivolous, but when societies debated politics, religion, and the economy they were felt to voice threateningly radical opinions. When the reaction against the French Revolution hardened, public political debate became impossible and societies were outlawed. Despite those chequered fortunes they served as places for self-improvement for many men of …
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