Introduction: The groundwork of change Eighteenth-century evolutionary theory Practial awareness The chapters and a definition Part I: Threats to the species : madness, discontent, and the danger of dissolution. 1. Causation and contexts of hatred : savage beasts mortal and deadly. Conjuring up reasons : original sin, fragile connections, church and state ; Aristocratic historiography : advocacy and resistance ; Metaphorical enhancements : floods, propagation, legions, and Dutch treats 2. Madness, extirpation, and Defoe's Shortest way with the dissenters. Madness ; Root and branch ; Defoe's Shortest way, Sacheverell's Political union, and religious conflict ; The shortest way : the Bible and other clues beyond the obvious ; Response and judgement ; Defoe as a character of his own creation Part II: Taking the cure and improving the species : sermons, compulsions, and Methodists. 3. The thirtieth of January sermon : from extermination to inclusion. The thirtieth of January sermon and Royalist Law ; The High Church response and the beginning of change ; Higher church and moderate responses to the High Church response ; Raising the decibals in a lowered church ; State, not church ; God's hand, William's hand, and the Divine Right of Government ; Retrospective 4. "Compel them to come in," Luke 14:23 : from persecution to persuasion; against Augustinian compulsion. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes : response and rage ; Contexts changed and Augustine charged ; Happy had his works not been preserved ; Persuade them to come in ; Adopt men from all the nations of the earth : Equiano's conversion 5. Methodism : from antagonist to relation. The spreading fog ; Reforming the Reformation? Reforming reform? ; Grudging acceptance ; Humphrey Clinker : joining the family
Part III: Evolutionary reversion : the Gordon Riots, return to rage, and reinventing a cure. 6. Déjà vu all over again? : the Gordon riots, Bedlam revisited, restoration of order, and a trial on trial. Repeal, no Popery, and the Gordon Riots : destruction and the Puritan redivivus ; Renovating the language of cultural regress ; Church, state, and political causation ; Strategies of defense and alternative responses ; "What is to depose the sword? : the return of order, debate, arrest, trial, and consequences ; The trial of Lord George Gordon for treason
7. A very near thing : state terrorism, the fury of the aggrieved, and incompatibility with the safety of millions. A river too far ; The trials of Lord George Gordon, 1786-1787, and excommunication ; The trials of Lord George Gordon, 1786-1787 : libeling France and Britain ; Aftermath : flight, conversion, and sentence ; True colors : Robert Watson's Life of Lord George Gordon
8. Coping, repairing, and Dickens' Barnaby Rudge. How to cope? the world after the Gordon Riots ; Dickens' Barnaby Rudge : to the point a moral but not adorn a tale, the Victorian retrospective and punishment by neglect
Conclusion, summary, implications. A brief summary of a long book ; Illustrating Evolution.
