The Swinish Multitude

In his influential and prescient early assessment of the French Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke revealed his contempt for ordinary people - describing them as a 'swinish multitude' and, in the eyes of some, questioning their right to education. If the natural social hierarchy was challenged, Burke argued - 'learning', together with its natural protectors and guardians the nobility and the clergy would be 'cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude' (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 8th edition. London, 1791, p. 117). The phrase hit a chord. As this Google Ngram illustrates, there was a huge spike in its usage following the publication of Burke's text, and it continued to be deployed well into the nineteenth century. The popularity and persistence of the phrase prompts several questions. Where did Burke get the idea from? What was the response to it? And why did it continue to be used for so long?

The origins of the phrase can be traced back to the Bible. In the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew Chapter 7 Verse 6, Jesus declared:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you (King James Bible).

‘A Swinish Multitude’, by John (‘HB’) Doyle, printed by Alfred Duôte, published by Thomas McLean. Lithograph. 7 October 1835. National Portrait Gallery: NPG D41349. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The reference not just to pigs, but also to trampling good things under foot, makes clear that this was the source of Burke's phrase (interestingly the conceit also appears in William Langland's poem 'Piers Plowman' and in John Milton's 'Sonnet XII', where the 'hogs' are condemned for failing to properly understand the nature of liberty). Moreover, the notion of 'pearls of wisdom' enhances the connection with learning. Burke's opponents in the 1790s were quick to subvert his jibe and turn it to their advantage.

Early responses simply expressed hostility to Burke's sentiment. As, for example, William Belsham's reference in one of his Essays, philosophical, historical and literary of 1791 and Charlotte Smith's in her novel Desmond. Commenting on the calmness of the French people on the King's return to Paris Lionel Desmond asserts, in a vein that perhaps also alludes and responds to Milton's use of the term:

This will surely convince the world, that the bloody democracy of Mr Burke, is not a combination of the swinish multitude, for the purposes of anarchy, but the association of reasonable beings, who determine to be, and deserve to be, free. (Charlotte Smith, Desmond. A novel, in three volumes. London, 1792, Volume 3, p. 89).

Around the same time there appeared a song entitled 'Burke's Address to the "swinish" Multitude', to be sung to the tune 'Derry, down down', which satirised  Burke's position.

More substantial responses to Burke's argument about learning also began to appear. One of the earliest of these was A reply to Mr Burke's invective by the radical Thomas Cooper. Cooper was defending himself and his associate James Watt against an attack made by Burke in Parliament on 30 April 1792 concerning their presentation to the Jacobins on behalf of the Constitutional Society of Manchester. In the course of his defence, Cooper reflected on the relationship between knowledge and freedom. He condemned Burke for presenting national ignorance as a means of maintaining the position of the privileged orders and called instead for the dissemination of political knowledge so that the people could understand and secure their rights and freedoms:

Thus we find that public Ignorance is the Cement of the far famed Alliance between Church and State; and that Imposture, political and religious, cannot maintain its ground, if Knowledge and Discussion once finds its way among the Swinish Multitude. (Thomas Cooper, A Reply to Mr Burke's Invective. Manchester, 1792, p. 36).

Portrait of Thomas Cooper by Asher Brown Durand, after Charles Cromwell Ingham. Line engraving, 1829. National Portait Gallery: NPG D10570. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

This whole section of Cooper's work was inserted, unacknowledged, into the Address published by the Birmingham Constitutional Society soon after its establishment in November 1792. This is perhaps not surprising since the raison d'etre of these societies was precisely to spread political knowledge, and it was partly the actions of the London Society for Constitutional Information (alongside those of the Revolution Society) that had provoked Burke in the first place.

Around the same time, works began to appear that were presented as being written by 'one of the "Swinish Multitude"'. One of these was entitled A Rod for the Burkites. It was printed in Manchester and perhaps again emerged from the circles around the Constitutional Society. Sonnet for the Fast-Day. To Sancho's Favourite Tune by one of the swinish multitude was another satirical song to the tune 'Derry, down, down'. James Parkinson, writing under the pseudonym Old Hubert, published An Address, to the Hon. Edmund Burke, from the Swinish Multitude in 1793. Parkinson, a successful palaeontologist and surgeon who gave his name to Parkinson's Disease, was also an active radical with a sharp concern for the poor. Parkinson's Address argued that since men are all alike, they must all be swinelike. The difference, then, was between 'Hogs of Quality' who enjoy the luxuries of the stye and the poor swinish multitude who have to work hard to survive and are obstructed at every turn:

Whilst ye are chewing the greatest dainties, and gorging yourselves at troughs filled with the daintiest wash; we, with our numerous train of porkers, are employed, from the rising to the setting sun, to obtain the means of subsistence, by turning up a stray root or two, or perhaps, picking up a few acorns. But, alas! of these we dare not partake, untill, by the laws made by ye Swine of quality, we have first deposited by far the greatest part in the store house of the stye, as rent for the light of heaven and for the air we breathe. (James Parkinson, An Address, to the Hon. Edmund Burke, from the Swinish Multitude. London, 1793, pp. 17-18).

Moreover, Parkinson also argued that keeping the poor ignorant was a deliberate means of keeping them down:

it would be no more than justice, if these lordly Swine would enable us to instruct our young, so that they might be capable of comprehending the innumerable laws which are laid down for their conduct; and which should, they, even through ignorance, transgress, they are sure immediately to be sent to the county pound, or perhaps delivered over to the butcher. (Parkinson, Address, p. 19).

Title page of Spence’s Pigs’ Meat. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections: Rare Books (RB 331.04 PIG). Reproduced with kind permission.

A further move by the radicals built on this point. In September 1793 two new periodical publications appeared that again commandeered the porcine language on the part of the poor. Thomas Spence's One Pennyworth of Pigs' Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude was swiftly followed by Daniel Isaac Eaton's Hog's Wash; or, a Salmagundy for Swine (subsequently retitled Politics for the People). These works not only spoke to and on behalf of the so-called 'swinish multitude', as Parkinson had done, but were designed to provide them with useful political knowledge. They offered short extracts from a range of texts that were 'Intended' as Spence explained:

To promote among the Labouring Part of Mankind proper Ideas of their Situation, of their Importance and of their Rights, and to convince them That their forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten nor their just Cause unpleaded, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages. (Thomas Spence, Pigs' Meat, title page).

Similarly, the full title of Eaton's publication explained that it consisted:

Of the choicest Viands, contributed by the Cooks of the present day, AND of the highest flavoured delicacies, composed by the Caterers of former Ages. (Daniel Isaac Eaton, Hog's Wash, 1793).

Title page of Eaton’s Politics for the People. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections: Friends (Friends 336-337). Reproduced with kind permission.

The extracts presented for the enrichment of the swinish multitude were eclectic. They included passages from: popular radical authors of the day such as William Frend, Joel Barlow, and John Thelwall; previous generations of radicals including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, James Harrington and Algernon Sidney; but also more mainstream authors like Jonathan Swift, John Locke and Samuel Pufendorf. Moreover, the Bible was also a fundamental source for both editors, with quotes from various books of the Old and New Testaments being deployed to demonstrate that God favoured support for, rather than oppression of, the poor.

Though politically they were polar opposites Spence and Eaton endorsed what they saw as Burke's sense of the connection between ignorance and oppression and, therefore, between knowledge and resistance. Their hope was Burke's fear; that by providing the poor with political nourishment - feeding their minds as well as their bodies - they would be led to see and acknowledge both the oppression under which they suffered and the justice of their right to overthrow it. This, it was hoped, would provoke them into action. It did not, of course, but both the hope and the fear remain to this day.

Radical Periodicals

On Twitter, I particularly enjoy following English Radical History (@EnglishRadical) which was created by Matthew Kidd. Its tweets introduce key figures and dates in radical history, as well as sharing short quotations from radical texts that often speak directly to contemporary affairs. In this last regard, @EnglishRadical is a modern reincarnation of the popular radical periodicals of the 1790s which sought to educate 'ordinary' readers by sharing short extracts from key political texts.

Title page of Thomas Spence’s Pig’s Meat: Or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude (London, 1793-1795). Image by Rachel Hammersley from the copy held at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Rare Books (RB 331.04 PIG). Reproduced with kind permission.

The best known of these publications were One Pennyworth of Pig's Meat; Or Food for the Swinish Multitude (1793-1795) produced by Thomas Spence and Hog's Wash; or a Salmagundy for Swine (1793-1795), later given the more prosaic title Politics for the People, which was the work of Daniel Isaac Eaton. The porcine references in the titles were not coincidental but a deliberate response to Edmund Burke's dismissive comment in Reflections on the Revolution in France that unless learning remained the preserve of the nobility and priesthood (as had traditionally been the case) it would be cast with them 'into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude' (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. London, 1790, p. 117). Far from being cowed by this slight, Spence interpreted it as a challenge. The first issue of Pig's Meat, which appeared in September 1793, offered extracts that had been collected by the 'Poor Man's Advocate' (a title Spence had first adopted in the 1770s) over the previous twenty years. His aim, in making them available to the 'Labouring Part of Mankind', was to promote among them 'proper Ideas of their Situation, of their Importance, and of their Rights. And to convince them That their forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just Cause unpleaded, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages' (Thomas Spence, One Pennyworth of Pig's Meat. London, 1793, p. 1).

Edmund Burke from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1769. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 655. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The extracts offered in Pig's Meat were taken from a variety of texts. These ranged from relatively obscure pamphlets produced during the Interregnum, such as William Sprigge's A Modest Plea for an Equal Commonwealth Against Monarchy (1659), via standard commonwealth fare like John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters (1720-1723), to more recent radical commentary as in William Frend's Peace and Union (1793). The most frequently quoted author was James Harrington. Spence included excerpts from several of the works reprinted in John Toland's The Oceana of James Harrington, and his other works, and he stated explicitly in volume 1 that 'Portions of this Collection will frequently be inserted in the Course of this Publication' (Spence, Pig's Meat, p. 79). While the majority of excerpts were taken from prose pamphlets, the full range of genres on display was wide, with sermons, correspondence, travel literature, and even poems and songs all being included.

Title page of Politics for the People, or A Salmagundi for Swine (London, 1793-1795). Image by Rachel Hammersley from the copy held at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections (Friends 336-337). Reproduced with kind permission.

The extracts explored various themes including: free speech; constitutional reform; the oppression of the poor; and the superiority of republican over monarchical government. Many spoke obliquely to contemporary political events. For example, several considered the negative effects of war, particularly for the poor, a resonant (but also a controversial) issue at the height of the conflict with the French Republic. A key feature of Spence's periodical - which was advertised on the title page - was the fact that he included Biblical passages alongside secular texts. He was keen to demonstrate that the ideas he was advocating, in particular concern for the poor, could be found in the Bible itself. Moreover, the political authors cited included not just known radicals such as Joel Barlow, Richard Lewes, and Spence himself, but also more mainstream - even conservative - thinkers such as Jonathan Swift, Lord Lyttleton, and Samuel Pufendorf, who were cited in such a way as to draw out the radical implications of their arguments.

Just a few weeks after the first issue of Pig's Meat appeared, Eaton launched Hog's Wash, which was very similar in its approach and format. It too immediately drew attention to the Burkean inspiration. The epigram by 'Old Hubert' declared:

Since Times are bad, and solid food is rare;

The Swinish herd should learn to live on Air:

Acorns and Pease, alas! no more abound,

A feast of Words, is in the HOG TROUGH found.

The subtitle claimed that the work would consist:

Of the choicest Viands, contributed by the Cooks of the present day,

AND

Of the highest flavoured delicacies, composed by the Caterers of former Ages.

(Daniel Isaac Eaton, Hog's Wash, or A Salmagundy for Swine, London, 1793,

Titlepage).

Though the price was 2d (double that of Spence's periodical), it was still clearly aimed at ordinary folk. Alongside the sort of fare found in Pig's Meat, Eaton also made much use of fables designed to deliver moral messages. For example, at the beginning of the sixth issue he offers the tale 'Logs, Storks, and Asses' that he claims was written in 1694, soon after the Glorious Revolution. Its message was that even when the people choose their own king, they still tend to end up with a bad ruler who hinders, rather than benefits, his subjects.

Spence’s letter in Politics for the People. Image by Rachel Hammersley from the copy detailed above. Reproduced with permission.

The connection between Pig's Meat and Hog's Wash was more direct than just a similarity of purpose and format. Eaton's first issue opens with a letter addressed to him and dated 9th September 1793, which praises the publication. The letter's author expresses concern 'that the provision should be devoured faster than ever your unremitting exertions might be able to supply it' and so offers 'a few morsels from his own store of "Hog's Meat" (Eaton, Hog's Wash, p. 2). The passages that follow come from Lord Lyttleton's Persian Letters, excerpts from which had also appeared in the first volume of Pig's Meat. Moreover, the letter is signed  'A Brother Grunter', a pseudonym that Spence had previously used when writing to Eaton directly.

The first page of the first issue of John Marshall’s The Newcastle Christian Reformer’s Monthly Tract (Newcastle, 1821). Image by Rachel Hammersley from the copy at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections Edwin Clarke Local (Clarke 559). Reproduced with kind permission.

It was not only Eaton who was inspired by Spence's model, nor did such publications only flourish in London. In the 1790s Welsh-language versions quickly appeared. Similarly, in the 1820s a Newcastle printer, John Marshall, published The Newcastle Christian Reformer's Monthly Tracts in which religious and political texts were interspersed with fables. In January 1823 Marshall began publishing the Northern Reformer's Monthly Magazine. It comprised a range of political material and its purpose was reflected in this statement that appeared in the final issue:

The editors of this Magazine, during the short period of their labours endeavoured to enlighten and instruct their fellow countrymen on subjects closely connected with their interests and the common good; and have also exposed some of the grossest evils of the system of misgovernment under which we are, for some time longer, it is feared, doomed to suffer.

In many respects the zenith of this genre came with the publication in 1839 of William J. Linton's The National, which, as I noted in a previous blogpost, was subtitled A Library for the People. It provided readers with extracts from a wide range of texts, including a number that had appeared in the publications of Spence and Eaton - such as Swift, Harrington, Godwin, Milton, Voltaire and Rousseau. Indeed some passages were identical, suggesting that we can see here the creation of a canon of radical texts.

Though times (and methods) are very different today, the tradition does continue. On 2 July 2022 @Radical History commemorated the birth in 1750 of Thomas Spence with this tweet:

Experiencing Political Texts: Workshop 1s

The week commencing 5th September 2022 was politically eventful in the UK, with a change between Monday and Friday not just of Prime Minister but also of monarch. In the midst of this political upheaval we held the first Experiencing Political Texts workshop, on the theme 'Genre and Form in Early Modern Political Thought'. Twelve rich and stimulating papers were delivered, disrupted only slightly by a gas leak just before our final panel which prompted an evacuation of the building.

In his paper on ceremonial writings from the civil war period, Niall Allsopp emphasised the importance of thinking about the key terms of the project and the complexity of their meanings. Inspired by this prompt, the reflections that follow are organised around the three words of our network's title, taken in reverse order.

The 1777 print edition of the Traité des trois imposteurs. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Collectively, the speakers adopted a broad understanding of what we mean by the term 'text'. Many spoke about written sources (both manuscript and print) but a significant number incorporated into their discussion non-textual forms such as images, artefacts, and even landscapes. Martin Dzelzainis made an explicit case for images to be understood - and read - as texts. Noting that paintings were cited as a casus belli by the English in their conflict with the Dutch in the 1670s, Dzelzainis showed how the rhetorical technique of citing inartificial proofs could encompass visual as well as written sources, and highlighted the difficulties visual propaganda materials presented for those who were charged with refuting them in print.

The title page to the 1698 edition of Sidney’s Discourses, edited by John Toland and printed by John Darby. Note the description of Sidney which highlights his aristocratic credentials and royal connections.

Other papers addressed the malleability of texts and the fact that a single 'text' might change its identity over time. In her paper on clandestine literature, Delphine Doucet explained that the text of the Traité des trois imposteurs was not stable. New chapters were added over time so that different versions of the text vary in length and content. In addition, from 1719 when the first printed version of the text was published, print and manuscript versions circulated alongside each other. The other text discussed by Delphine, Jean Bodin's Colloquium heptapolomeres, was more stable, but here too paratextual additions (such as an index) influenced the way in which particular copies were read. I made a similar observation in my own paper about how the paratextual material added to editions of English republican texts produced by John Toland and Thomas Hollis shaped how those works were interpreted. For example, Toland's emphasis on the monarchical and aristocratic connections of the original authors served to make works published under the English commonwealth applicable to the circumstances of English society following the Glorious Revolution. It was not only full texts that were 'recycled' in later editions, but also extracts, anecdotes, and even jokes. It was interesting to note that Daniel Isaac Eaton, who has come to my attention because of his tendency to republish extracts from radical political texts in his periodical Politics for the People, is also known to Tim Somers as regards his reprinting of radical jokes.

Various papers highlighted the fluidity of boundaries between texts and the interplay between different kinds of text. Gaby Mahlberg presented John Toland's Anglia Libera as a patchwork sewn from a range of radical texts, thereby emphasising the importance of intertextuality within the republican canon. She argued that readers of the German translation will have read the work differently from their English counterparts owing to the fact that they will have been unaware of the sources on which Toland was drawing. Tim Somers's paper reminded us of the fluid nature of the boundary between textual and oral culture. Jest books not only recorded jokes that had been heard - thereby reflecting a move from the oral to the textual - but might also operate as collections of jokes to be retold - thereby facilitating a shift back from textual to oral form. In his paper on Thomas Spence, Tom Whitfield noted that Spence's first move as a political actor also involved a shift from the oral to the textual, with the lecture that he delivered to the Newcastle Philosophical Society in 1775 being printed for sale and circulation (a move that sparked condemnation). But Spence took this crossing of boundaries much further. The Land Plan he had set out in his lecture made the move from prose to verse, and was abstracted in slogans which he stamped onto tokens and chalked onto walls. The relationship between Spence's pamphlets and his tokens was particularly complex. The tokens were used to advertise his Land Plan and whet the appetite of readers for his printed works, but as Tom indicated as a form of coinage they could also be handed in at Spence's shop in exchange for a pamphlet.

An example of one of Thomas Spence’s tokens. This is a halfpenny token thought to be from 1790. Reproduced from https://onlinecoin.club The observes depicts an ass carrying a heavy burden with the slogans ‘RENTS’ and ‘TAXS’. The ass was commonly used to represent labouring people as in Sermons to Asses by Spence’s friend John Murray. On the reverse are listed the names of three Thomas’s: Spence; More; and Paine - all said to be advocates for the rights of man.

The focus of our project is primarily on early modern political texts, but some of the papers served to remind us that there is value in adopting a broad and flexible definition of the term 'political'. Two papers in particular focused on genres that we would not immediately think of in these terms: Tim's paper on jest books and Harriet Palin's paper on religious catechisms. Tim pointed out that, while we often think of political jokes as graphic or literary satire aimed at challenging authority, jest books are primarily concerned with mirth and diversion. Yet Tim made a strong case for them still having a political role to play, showing how jests were used by defeated royalists during the civil wars to identify themselves and solidify their position, and by eighteenth-century Whigs to ridicule what they saw as the immoral behaviour of their opponents. Meanwhile, Harriet showed how catechisms were aimed at persuasion and could be read as a calls to action. In this regard I was struck by the parallel between republican treatises that were designed to generate active citizens whose behaviour would strengthen the common good, and Protestant catechisms aimed at creating active believers whose actions would strengthen both their own faith and their religious communities. Moreover, in both cases there is a tension between giving agency to people and directing this towards specific ends.

Sir Richard Fanshawe by William Faithorne, 1667. National Portrait Gallery NPG D22736. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The question of what we mean by 'political' texts was approached from a different angle in Max Skönsberg's paper, in which he introduced the Subscription Library project that he has been working on alongside Mark Towsey and others. Max's analysis of borrowing records has revealed that theoretical works of politics like Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises were not particularly popular with the members of subscription libraries. Nor were parliamentary documents and debates borrowed frequently by readers. Yet, we should not assume from this that the members of these libraries were uninterested in politics. Among the works borrowed most frequently were histories, including David Hume's History of England (borrowed from Bristol's Library 180 times between 1773 and 1784) and William Robertson's History of Charles V (borrowed 131 times in the same period). While adopting the historical form, these works were overtly political and Mark's paper on readers' manuscript adaptations of Hume's History made clear that readers read them for their own political purposes. This idea of history as an explicitly political genre was reiterated in Tiago Sousa Garcia's paper on Richard Fanshawe's translation of the Portuguese classic the Lusiad. Tiago introduced us to the seventeenth-century debate about whether works like Lucan's Civil Wars and the Lusiad should be viewed as epic poetry or history and highlighted the different connotations associated with each genre.

The title page of the French translation of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government produced by P. A. Samson. Source http://gallica.bnf.fr Bibliothèque national de France.

Finally, there is the question of what we mean by 'experiencing' political texts? By using this word we are indicating an interest not simply in passive reading, but rather in more active engagement. The question of how this is achieved was the subject of several papers, with speakers reflecting on how humour, rhetoric, the blending of fact and fiction, and other literary devices were used to engage readers. Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq's paper on eighteenth-century French translations of English republican texts highlighted a further strategy: the deployment of emotion. She described how the French translator of Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Government added to the translation a letter Sidney had written to a friend in which he explained why he had decided to remain in exile rather than returning to England. The letter drew an emotional connection between Sidney's experience of exile and that of the translator himself (a Huguenot refugee then living in the Dutch Republic) and via him to his Huguenot readers. By reminding his readers that they shared the emotional experience of exile with Sidney, the translator provided an incentive for them to engage with his work, and directed their approach to it. Of course, engaging emotions was not always viewed positively. Part of the objection to epic poetry, in the seventeenth-century debate described by Tiago, was precisely its tendency to do this.

The experience of reading a particular text might also vary depending on its format. As I noted in my paper, the editions of Sidney's Discourses published by John Toland, Thomas Hollis, and Daniel Eaton were very different from each other. They were directed at different audiences, had different purposes, and created distinct reading experiences. Similarly as Gaby and Myriam-Isabelle demonstrated, the experience of reading a text in translation is often different from reading the original. In the case of Toland's Anglia Libera, the title of the German version was truncated and the dedication cut. The papers by Max and Mark revealed that the reading experience might also be different when accessing a library copy of a work as opposed to reading one's own copy. Library members could not always control when they were able to access a particular book and might even have to read a multi-volume work in reverse order. While we know that readers added annotations to library copies, they might nevertheless have felt more inhibited about doing so. They were, therefore, more likely to produce their own separate notes on a work (of the kind Mark presented to us) rather than scribbling in the margins. Even the same physical text might be experienced differently by different audiences, as Tom made clear in his discussion of Spence's tokens. Tom argued that Spence adjusted the price depending on the purchaser: selling them at a high price to collectors, but throwing them into the street to be picked up by poor Londoners for free. For some, the tokens were therefore a collectible item to be catalogued, stored, and cherished, but for London's poor they were an abstract of Spence's radical programme and an invitation to discover more.

Finally, Niall raised the interesting point about the relationship between readers and spectators. The ceremonial works Niall is studying were designed to make readers feel like spectators and to create an imagined community. Drawing on Stephen Shapin's notion of virtual witnessing as applied to scientific experiments, Niall argued that ceremonial writings could therefore be used to affirm the authority of the magistrate(s) involved. This idea remains relevant today. Over the last few weeks those of us living in the UK have found ourselves drawn (willingly or unwillingly) into virtual witnessing in the ceremonials associated with a royal funeral.

We will pick up many of these issues at our next workshop in York in late February 2023. I only hope that the political situation that week will be less eventful.

Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government: The Journey of a Text from Manuscript to Translation

Covid-19 has disrupted everything, including academic conferences, workshops and seminars. In the light of the necessary postponement of this year’s Translating Cultures workshop in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, I have chosen to suspend my series on Myths Concerning Republican Government for one month more in order to offer a brief account of the paper I would have given at that workshop, which reflects the new project that I am currently in the process of developing.

Scholarship on translation inevitably focuses on words. How are specific terms translated? How accurately does a translation convey the meaning and sentiment of a work? But what about the form in which those words are presented: what role does the genre that is used or the physical appearance of a text play in conveying meaning, indicating audience, and determining purpose; and what happens when a translation appears in a different form from the original? These are questions I had begun to ponder during previous Wolfenbüttel workshops.

Algernon Sidney, after Justus van Egmont, based on a work of 1663. National Portrait Gallery NPG 568. Reproduced thanks to a Creative Commons license.

For my contribution to our postponed third workshop I plan to explore these issues using Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government as a case study. Though an important seventeenth-century work with a long afterlife in England and abroad, the original 'text' was simply a collection of manuscript sheets found on Sidney's desk when he was arrested, in May 1683, for his alleged involvement in the Rye House Plot. In its journey from Sidney's desk to the French Revolution, where it generated particular interest, Discourses Concerning Government was transformed multiple times through the interventions of various collaborators.

The first stage of this was its publication as a physical book in 1698 by the editor John Toland and printer John Darby. In 1762, Thomas Hollis published a new edition in his 'Library of Liberty' and, a further thirty years on, Daniel Eaton followed suit with his own edition. Over the same period The Discourses established a French presence. Toland's edition was reviewed in the Huguenot periodical Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in 1699. Soon after, a French translation was produced by a Huguenot refugee Pierre-August Samson. It too was reviewed in Huguenot periodicals as well as being reprinted in 1755 and 1794. In 1789 Sidney's ideas were drawn to the attention of a wider French audience via Lettre de félicitation de milord Sidney aux Parisiens et à la nation françoise. Exploring the different stages of this text's journey, and changes in its form that occurred in the process, reveals interesting evidence about the relationship between the form and content of texts and translations.

The frontispiece to Toland and Darby’s 1698 edition of Sidney’s text. I am grateful to Gaby Mahlberg for providing me with this image.

First, the physical form of a text - its size, the quality of the paper, the sophistication of the frontispiece - offers indications as to its audience, purpose, and significance. Here there is a marked contrast between the different versions of The Discourses. The Toland and Hollis editions are large lavish volumes intended for the private libraries of the rich (Toland) or major university and public libraries (Hollis). Hollis went so far as to bind the works in his Library of Liberty in red leather and to emboss them with symbols of liberty such as the bonnet rouge. By contrast Daniel Eaton's edition was more modest, being part of a scheme by the London Corresponding Society to make available cheap versions of key political texts. In fact, Eaton not only published Sidney's text in full, but also included excerpts in his weekly periodical Politics for the People. The French translations too were generally smaller than Toland's original, perhaps reflecting the humble and transient lifestyle of Huguenots at the time.

Secondly, it is interesting to observe the connections these editors and translators saw between texts. Toland was largely responsible for the creation of a canon of English republican works and he deliberately associated Sidney's Discourses (written in the 1680s) with works produced during the English Revolution, emphasising their common themes. His 1704 reprint of the Discourses explicitly alerted readers to the fact that John Milton's, Edmund Ludlow's and James Harrington's works could also be found in Derby's shop. Similarly, Hollis's Library of Liberty set Sidney's text alongside works by Milton, Ludlow, Andrew Marvell and Marchamont Nedham; and the common binding used physical resemblance to reinforce the ideological connection. In sending collections of works to particular institutions Hollis was also able, as Mark Somos demonstrated to us last year, to use marginalia to create a trail of republican writings and to influence how they were read.

Pierre-August Samson’s 1702 French translation of Sidney’s Discourses. With thanks to Gaby Mahlberg for providing the image.

Thirdly there is the question of genre. Knowledge of Sidney in France came initially via the reviews in periodicals. Here, then, The Discourses was associated with Huguenot concerns - in particular Protestantism and resistance to absolute monarchy. How did this affect French readings of Sidney's text? And what about Lettre de félicitation de milord Sidney. This was not a translation, but a short work pretending that Sidney had returned from the dead to counsel the French. Presenting Sidney's ideas in the form of a letter addressed to the revolutionaries allowed those ideas to be targeted at their concerns. Content and form, then, are inextricably bound together. To fully understand the one - we must also pay close attention to the other.