Chapter Six What Is the People?

Abstract

Framed by questions of popular participation in politics and the problem of public opinion, this chapter considers Roman themes on the London stage after Waterloo and Kemble's retirement. Post‐Waterloo Roman plays show how the theatre functions as a public space for debate on problems of scarcity, conspiracy, revolt, and the use of violence to achieve political ends. Payne's Brutus and Knowles's Caius Gracchus clearly align themselves with Reform politics, while Croly's Catiline uses an episode from Roman republican history to link popular sovereignty to domestic misrule and corrupt imperial governance. All three plays, however, are critical of the Roman populace, which they depict as a mob not a “people,” one incapable of articulating its interests coherently. Given increasing demands for franchise reform, this depiction of the Roman populace demonstrates republican Rome's role shaping British responses to the most contemporary of events.

Regulating Greenhouse Gases in Canada: Constitutional and Policy Dimensions

“…For example, carbon capture and storage technology, which would capture CO 2 at its point of emission and pipe and store it underground without allowing its escape into the atmosphere, 223 would require a substantial amount of government-sponsored research, the construction of pipelines that cross property boundaries and jurisdictions, and the monitoring of storage facilities to ensure the CO 2 actually stays underground. 224 Development and maturation of this technology is not possible without substantial governmental involvement. It has also been argued that climate technologies need such widespread and rapid deployment that uniformity of technology is required to coordinate their worldwide adoption.…”