Imagining a National Health Service at the turn of the Nineteenth Century

A Covid-era celebration of the NHS.

My long-standing concerns about the future of the NHS have been exacerbated in recent weeks and months. Less than a year ago the dental practice, which we have been attending since my children were little, suddenly announced that it was going fully private and would no longer offer dental check-ups or treatment on the NHS. I spent several frantic days searching for an alternative NHS practice but found that none of the dentists in our area were taking on NHS patients. As a result we were forced to 'go private' or have no regular dental care at all. When I vented about this to my parents they told me that the same thing had happened in Leeds a few years ago and that several family members had been forced into a similar situation. In certain areas, then, the NHS is already starting to disappear.

Where it is still functioning there are problems too. A relative was taken into hospital recently following a fall which resulted in a minor fracture. Within a week or two of being in hospital she was in a worse state than when she had been admitted, having acquired two pressure sores. These arose because there were not enough staff members on the ward to adjust her position on a regular basis. I do not blame the nursing staff and health care assistants themselves. The problem lies with those in charge in the hospitals and, ultimately, with the government which starves the NHS of funds 'in the public interest' calling it 'efficiency'. Our relative has now been moved to a different hospital where the staff are trying to put right the painful consequences of the earlier lapse in care, but it is not easy for them. Over the May Bank Holiday weekends staffing numbers were very low. At times just one member of staff was responsible for the six women in the bay. That staff member needs to ensure that her patients are able to eat their meals, given regular medication, that their wounds are dressed, and that other care is provided. Four of the six women are suffering from hospital delirium, causing them to behave erratically. That staff member's task is impossible.

The original 1775 edition of Spence’s Land Plan. Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with kind permission.

Given all of this, one section of the Spence text I have been reading this month particularly caught my attention. The Restorer of Society to its Natural State is the text for which Spence was charged with seditious libel in April 1801. Organised as a series of letters to a 'fellow citizen' that were purportedly written between July and December 1800, the work addresses the question of how to improve 'the happiness of mankind'. Spence's land plan is presented as the means of achieving that happiness and addressing the pressing issues of the day, including war and the 'artificial famine' that had been thrust on the country. The land plan, which Spence had been advocating since the 1770s when he was a young man in Newcastle, involved abolishing private property in land (while retaining other forms of private property) and instead declaring the land in each parish to be the property of the parish and to be managed by its inhabitants acting as a corporation. Portions of the land would be rented out for cultivation and the money generated used to pay national government costs and to fund local public works, with the remainder divided among all inhabitants (men, women and children). While much of The Restorer of Society repeats the details of this scheme, the advantages it will bring, and the - peaceful - means of bringing it about, some letters deal with more specific issues. This is the case with Letter XIII.

Spence notes that the management of hospitals for the sick is of the greatest importance to the public. Yet he observes that the system then in operation was far from ideal. The governors of hospitals required sick patients to provide 'Letters of recommendation' before they could be admitted. He goes on:

The Difficulties attending the procurement of these recommendatory papers, and

the time and strength wasted about them, are often of the most hurtful tendency to

poor creatures labouring under the accumulated burdens of Disease and poverty

and are certainly the cause of many a Death. (Thomas Spence, The Restorer of Society

to its Natural State. London, 1801, p. 51).

Outpatients were also treated shamefully. They often did not know when the doctor would be available, leading Spence to suggest that if the patient's 'Time be of any value at all' he is better to 'pay for his Medicines elsewhere, than to fret so many hours away in waiting'. Spence is under no allusions as to the intentions behind this inconvenience: 'It is doubtless to deter as many as possible from applying to such places for relief'.

St Thomas’s Hospital, London. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Spence proposes instead that the hospitals should be open for the admission of the sick every day, without the need for a prior application: 'let all immediately be admitted either as In or Out patients, as their Cases should require. No questions should be asked about circumstances' (Spence, The Restorer of Society, p. 52). In response to a hypothetical question about what the consequence of this system would be for those doctors without a position in a hospital who would be 'ruined if such free and easy Access were permitted' Spence is uncompromising. His purpose, he insists, is not 'the Interest of any particular Set of Men' but 'the Public Good'. He goes on to imagine something resembling the modern NHS. '[S]uppose', he says, 'that Hospitals were all supported by County Rates, instead of Private Subscriptions, that we might get rid of paying such distressing Homage to Subscribers and Governors, it would certainly be a great Improvement'. He continued:

The Business of Hospitals like all other Public Business, would be best conducted in

my Common Wealth. For in that incomparable State every thing of as extensive

nature and Influence beyond the Bounds of a Parish, as Hospitals, Colleges,

Bridges, Harbours, Roads, &c. would be supported by provincial or County Rates.

We currently have just such a system, but we are at risk of undermining it. Spence's text is a warning to us of where the current decline in the NHS might lead.

Networks of Resistance in European Print Culture

A Copy of Verses… Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, UK. Special Collections. Broadsides: 8/1/6. Reproduced with kind permission.

This year I have been involved with a group of colleagues at Newcastle University who are interested in the theme of ‘Networks of Resistance in European Print Culture’. From our very first meeting back in September, I was struck by the parallels across time and space, with similar themes and issues emerging in very different contexts. Since then we have established a reading group, which devoted its first meeting to John McMillian's article '"Our Founder, the Mimeograph Machine": Participatory Democracy in Students for a Democratic Society's Print Culture', and held a session in the Philip Robinson Library at which several of us presented an item or items from Special Collections as a way of introducing our own research in the area. Across these sessions, several themes have emerged.

The first is the value of ephemera. All of the works discussed in the two sessions were ephemeral in one sense or another. In the Library session, Melanie Wood and Rachel Anderson presented a series of miners' songs from the nineteenth century. Not only do they provide an insight into an oral culture that would often be lost to historians, but the songs are rare (they do not appear on the British Folksong Index) and the broadsides fragile. Yet they offer an important insight into the miners' strikes that took place in Northumberland and Durham in the early 1830s and 1840s, the issues surrounding those strikes, and the culture of solidarity among the miners.

Roger de Rabutin, comte d Bussy, Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1708). Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, UK. Special Collections. Bradshaw 848.4.BUS. Reproduced with kind permission.

The item presented by Joseph Hone, while less obviously ephemeral in its material form, fits the model described by Robert Darnton of works that were very popular in their own time, but have been largely forgotten today (Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. London, 1996). Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules by Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, was, as Joe explained, a scandalous presentation of the sex lives of the French King and royal family that Rabutin wrote to entertain his mistress. Originally produced as a manuscript for private circulation, the work was leaked and quickly became a best seller. While intended for titillation and entertainment, like eighteenth-century works of political pornography described by Darnton, it had political resonance and impact by undermining respect for royalty

Thomas Spence, Pigs’ Meat, or, lessons for the swinish multitude, second edition (London, 1795). Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University UK. Special Collections. Rare Books: RB 331.04 PIG. In this image it is possible to see the different types of paper used in this volume.

Thomas Spence's Pigs' Meat, which was the focus of my short presentation, was also a deliberately ephemeral work. Its cheap format made it affordable for ordinary working people who were Spence's target audience. By selling the periodical for just 1d per weekly issue, and by filling it with short extracts from a range of contemporary and historic political works, Spence was making political ideas accessible to those who might not normally come into contact with them. As he examined the physical copy, Joe Hone discovered that the work was actually even more ephemeral than we had realised. He noticed that the format was unusual. Not only are the sheets folded into three rather than the more usual four or eight, but the paper used to make the pages is not uniform. It would appear that this second edition of the first volume was produced from off-cuts that were perhaps lying around in Spence's shop. In this sense the miscellany format of the content of the work - composed of a series of extracts from different authors - is matched by the miscellaneous nature of the physical object itself.

If Spence had been a student in 1960s America he would no doubt have been a member of the organisation Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and a keen user of their mimeograph machine. This early form of photocopier was used by SDS members to produce their own materials - including a regular newsletter (initially called Discussion Bulletin) and to copy correspondence written by members of the group. The nature of the bulletin was simultaneously ephemeral - in that it was cheaply produced - and a way of sharing ideas beyond the organisation's leadership.

This hints at an answer to the second theme prompted by these discussions: why works of this nature were printed at all. This is a particularly pertinent question in the case of the miners' songs, given that many of the miners themselves were illiterate and the songs would have been shared orally rather than relying on printed dissemination

The first, and most obvious, answer is that putting ephemera into print was a means of communication; of spreading ideas beyond face-to-face meetings and in doing so building a wider network or community. In the case of the miners we can perhaps see one consequence of this in the visit by William Roberts, a leading Bristol Chartist, to the miners in the North East to offer them his support. We cannot know for sure, but perhaps Roberts heard about the situation in Northumberland and Durham via the printed songs. They would certainly have been a good means of spreading news of the strikes to miners and political campaigners elsewhere in the country to encourage solidarity.

William Walker Story and George Watson, The Pitmen’s Union. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, UK. Special Collections. Broadsides 8/1/3. Reproduced with kind permission. This song includes reference to the Chartist William Roberts and his support for the north east miners.

Spence was also a keen writer and disseminator of songs. Several appear in Pigs' Meat itself, but there are also three collections of Spencean songs that were printed separately in the early nineteenth century. Spence had been writing songs since he was in Newcastle in the 1770s, and intended them to be sung at meetings of likeminded people. In the 1790s Spence was involved with the London Corresponding Society (LCS), a vehicle through which un-enfranchised artisans and workers campaigned for parliamentary reform. There is some evidence that songs were sung at LCS meetings and the society made great use of print more generally as a means of creating and expanding its community.

The SDS reminded me in various ways of the LCS and here too, as McMillian argued, print culture was key. He suggested that it was a good means of eliciting support for the organisation and building a sense of community - particularly over wider distances. Moreover in sharing ideas in print, and even reproducing private correspondence by members, the SDS leaders were modelling the kind of open democratic society they wanted to see on a national level.

McMillian also suggested a second reason why members of the SDS were keen to deploy print, one that I touched on in last month's blogpost. As some members acknowledged, the SDS's use of print opened opportunities for less socially confident members. Some who remained quiet in face-to-face meetings were much more articulate in print. In this sense print could be a more accessible medium for marginalised groups, including women and ethnic minorities. In the same way, the use of print by the LCS perhaps offered a route into political discussions (and perhaps even a voice) to labouring people who had not previously had the opportunity to express their political views.

The Pitmen’s Agreement. A New Song… Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, UK. Special Collections: Broadsides 8/1/16. Reproduced with kind permission.

A third reason for putting words into print is that it can be seen as giving legitimacy to the claims made, or ensuring a lasting record of those claims. This is perhaps most resonant in the case of the miners' protest songs. As noted above, many miners would not have been able to read the broadsides, but also would not have needed to since they knew the songs by heart and were familiar with the events they were describing. The broadsides were perhaps useful, though, in legitimising the miners' cause not just to others at the time but also to posterity. Melanie and Rachel noted that the local Newcastle newspapers had tended to be neutral on the events described in the songs. Perhaps printing the songs was a means for the miners to put their side of the case to a wider public.

Spence did something similar when he found himself on the wrong side of the authorities. In The Case of Thomas Spence he offered an account of the circumstances of his arrest and subsequent release for selling seditious books in 1792. In The Important Trial of Thomas Spence he offered a full account of his 1803 trial, presented from his own perspective, perhaps to counter the official newspaper reports. The same might also be true of an organisation like the SDS - particularly in its early years when it was seeking to establish itself - with print being used as a way to gain status and legitimacy.

Here we see the title page of the Comte de Bussy’s work with its false imprint.

One final theme that was prompted by the workshop was the value and reliability - or unreliability - of imprints. In my work on Spence I have been using the information given on the title pages of his pamphlets to build a chronology of his bookselling businesses - identifying which premises he operated from and when he moved from one to another. As Joe pointed out in his talk, not all imprints can be used in this way. The title page of Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules gives the printer as Pierre Marteau of Cologne. As Joe noted, very few books were printed in Cologne at this time, since the city probably only had two presses. The use of a false imprint was particularly common in the case of scandalous or seditious books, and 'Pierre Marteau, Cologne' was a very common example of this which was used across Europe in the early modern period. We explored whether false imprints were genuinely intended to hide, and therefore protect, the printer (given that other elements of the copies such as the wood cut ornaments could have been used for identification) or whether the false imprint was a signal to readers interested in scandalous material. In the late seventeenth century 'Amsterdam' was often used as a false imprint for English books that showed some sympathy for republican government. Of course, as the Library staff observed, the use of false imprints presents problems for those involved in cataloguing works. The convention when cataloguing is to transcribe the information on the title page. If some of that information is false, then the catalogue itself is corrupted as a result. As this would suggest, there is much to learn from paying careful attention to the material form and paratextual elements of ephemeral material.

Trial by Jury

In early December the justice secretary, David Lammy, announced that in order to address the huge backlog in the criminal justice system, jury trials should only be used in the most serious cases in England and Wales. Though he subsequently back-tracked a little on the original proposal, the plan remains to significantly reduce the use of trial by jury in minor cases. Lammy's announcement prompted some commentators to note that trial by jury has been an important part of our legal system since Magna Carta. It led me to reflect on those political activists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who both celebrated the idea of trial by jury in theory, and relied on it in practice when they found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

John Lilburne, unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D28982. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

This famous image of the Leveller John Lilburne depicts him defending himself at the bar, alongside a medal that was designed to commemorate his acquittal by a jury in October 1649. Lilburne had been charged according to an act which declared it treason to claim either in writing or verbally that the Commonwealth Government (established after the execution of Charles I) was 'tyrannical, usurped, or unlawful'. While Lilburne was no fan of the monarchy he had distanced himself from the regicide and was highly critical of the Rump Parliament, insisting that it was illegitimate.

Lilburne was tried in front of a jury at the Guildhall in London in the autumn of 1649. He chose to defend himself and is depicted here with a copy of Sir Edward Coke's Institutes in his hand. He used Coke to argue that the English understanding of fundamental liberty (reflected in both Magna Carta and the 1628 Petition of Right) insisted that an Act of Parliament should be deemed invalid if it overrode principles of equity and morality or of common law. Of course, Coke also presented trial by jury as a fundamental English right and as crucial to the liberty that was understood to be enshrined in the English constitution. Lilburne spoke at length during the trial and at the end he gave a long speech directed at the jury in which he presented himself as a 'freeborn Englishman and a Christian' who was fighting for the rights of all 'freeborn Englishmen'. The speech was clearly rousing - at its end many of those present responded 'Amen' and the jury took just an hour to deliver its verdict 'Not Guilty', prompting onlookers to cheer and shout in celebration for more than half an hour (Andrew Sharp, 'Lilburne, John (1615?-1657)' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi-org.libproxy.ncl.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/16654). Lilburne and his supporters were convinced that being tried by a jury had been crucial to the outcome. The commemorative medal lists the names of the jurors and declares:

John Lilborne saved by the power of the Lord and the integrity of his jury who are

juge of law as wel as fact October 26 1649.

Lilburne and his supporters were adamant that trial by jury offered an important check on the government, ensuring that it could not simply silence opponents - or those who asked awkward questions - with impunity.

Thomas Hardy, unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D3227. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Jury trials were still serving this function over one hundred years later during another period of intense political crisis. On 12th May 1794 the president of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), Thomas Hardy, was arrested on a charge of high treason. In the days that followed eleven other reformers, most of whom were members of either the LCS or the Society for Constitutional Information, were also arrested. Among their number was Thomas Spence. Their 'crime' was continuing to campaign for parliamentary reform at a time when Britain was at war with the revolutionary regime in France. The King sent a message to the House of Commons expressing his concern at the supposedly 'seditious practices' of corresponding societies. Only three leading figures (Hardy, John Thelwall and John Horne Tooke) were brought to trial. Tried by juries, in late October, all three were acquitted and following this the other LCS prisoners - including Spence - were also released.

Token commemorating the release from prison of Thomas Hardy in 1794. Unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D7039. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

In the light of these acquittals, and against the background of the ongoing French Revolution and war with France, the authorities sought to further limit the actions of reformers. The 'Treason Act 1795' redefined treason to encompass simply 'imagining the King's death' through writing or speaking (36 Geo 3 c.7). While the 'Seditious Assemblies Act' made gatherings of 50 people or more illegal (36 Geo 3 c. 8). In addition the authorities seem to have got better at manipulating the jury system so as to avoid acquittals and ensure that verdicts went in their favour.

Having been released in 1794, Thomas Spence fell foul of these changes, being arrested again in 1801, this time for having 'composed and published a seditious libel' in the form of his pamphlet The Restorer of Society to its Natural State (The Important Trial of Thomas Spence. London, 1803). Spence defended himself but was immediately found guilty by the jury. He was subsequently brought before four judges who sentenced him to a year's imprisonment in Shrewsbury jail and a fine of £20.

Thomas Spence, from an image held among the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with kind permission.

In his account of his trial, Spence complained of the unfairness and corruption of the legal system. He claimed that the Attorney General and journalists had misconstrued and misrepresented his ideas, saying that he was 'held up to the public as a fool or a madman' and was accused of seeking to overthrow all private property, whereas it was only landed property that he argued should be owned and maintained by local parishes. He also argued that, given the nature of the jury, the odds were stacked against him. It was unfair, he asserted, that he was being tried by men of property when his system explicitly called for a modification of landed property, which meant that his jurors had an interest in the outcome of his trial. It would have been fairer, he insisted, if at least half of the jury had been labourers without a vested interest (or at least with the opposite interest).

Like Lilburne, Spence went on to present himself as speaking not just on his own behalf but on behalf of the whole human race - especially the 'no-hopers'. The consequence of the verdict against him, he suggested, was that nobody should put forward any proposals for the public good, and in particular that labourers had no right to propose new laws. Laws it seemed were made by and for men of property. Rather than prosecuting people for proposing plans to improve human happiness, Spence argued, society ought to be prosecuting those who hold back such reforms despite their utility.

Of course, Lilburne and Spence were distinctive in being prosecuted for challenging the established regime, but that is also true of some who find themselves in the criminal justice system today. Will it be those people, I wonder, who will lose their right to trial by jury under the government's new proposals?

Lessons on Inequality from the Eighteenth Century

Economic inequality is a perennial issue. Recent news items have reminded me of this, and of the fact that it has sometimes been justified by appeal to the arguments of eighteenth-century writers, notably Adam Smith. This misconceives what he actually wrote, and ignores the arguments of other eighteenth-century thinkers - such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau - against economic inequality.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In advance of last week's budget there was much speculation as to whether Rachel Reeves was going to break Labour's manifesto pledge and raise income tax. Public services are currently struggling and raising the tax paid by those in the additional rate band (who earn over £125,140 of taxable income per year) and in the higher band (those earning £50,271 to £125,140) would have been the most straightforward way of providing a welcome boost to the public finances. Taxing those in the top two bands more heavily would also have served to reduce the growing inequalities in income within our society.

The Labour Market Statistics published by the Office for National Statistics in October reported that the mean average weekly wage (including bonuses) is £733 before tax - equating to an annual pre-tax average salary of around £38,100. Yet, as Forbes Magazine noted, this hides huge inequalities between individuals. The median annual pay of top chief executives was £4.22 million in 2024, while three million UK workers earn the minimum wage (£12.21 for those over 21, £10 for those aged 18-20 and £7.55 for those aged 16-17) (https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/business/average-uk-salary-by-age/#overview_of_earnings_in_the_uk); amounting to around £25,000 a year at best.

Image of Elon Musk from Wikimedia Commons.

Another story this month that highlighted the issue of extreme inequalities in income was the announcement on 7th November that Tesla shareholders had approved a record breaking trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk (already the world's richest man). The package is dependent on the company raising its market value over ten years and hitting various targets, and Musk will be paid in shares, but it is still an obscene amount of money to award to an individual. The Tesla board justified the deal on the grounds that it feared that without that incentive Musk might leave the company and it could not afford to lose him.

The notion that the outrageous salary package offered to Musk is necessary to keep him at Tesla draws on the argument that it is better for companies (and by extension for society) to keep rich people on side because vast inequalities of wealth within a society actually benefit everyone. Drawing on a (skewed) understanding of Adam Smith's thought, the theory of 'trickle-down economics' reassures us that we are all better off as a result of the huge salaries of the rich. Smith's theory of the invisible hand is taken as an excuse to reject state intervention in income distribution on the grounds that it is likely to be counterproductive (https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/adam-smith-peter-foster-invisible-hand). Yet, as research by David Hope and Julian Limberg has shown, tax cuts for the rich tend to result in further benefits for them rather than improving the lives of workers or stimulating economic growth (https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/107919/1/Hope_economic_consequences_of_major_tax_cuts_published.pdf).

Street sign from Geneva commemorating Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

While those who argue that vast inequalities in wealth are good for society sometimes seek eighteenth-century roots for their argument, the counter-argument - that growing inequality has negative rather than positive consequences for society as a whole - was also explored at that time. In his Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau insisted on the need for relative equality within a successful state:

as for wealth, no citizen be so very rich that he can buy another, and none so poor

that he is compelled to sell himself: Which assumes, on the part of the great,

moderation in goods and influence and, on the part of the lowly, moderation in

avarice and covetousness.

In a footnote Rousseau continued:

Do you, then, want to give the State stability? Bring the extremes as close together

as possible; tolerate neither very rich people nor beggars. These two states, which

are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from one come the

abettors of tyranny, and from the other tyrants; it is always between these two that

there is trafficking in public freedom; one buys it, the other sells it. (J. J. Rousseau,

Of the Social Contract, ed. V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997, p. 78).

For Rousseau, then, great inequalities of wealth within a state would encourage tyranny and corruption.

Writing just over thirty years later, the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence expressed a similar view. He observed the growing inequalities in British society:

Great landlords, and great farmers, now engross the country and these employ

none but great tradesmen. No little masters to be seen now, no medium; but very

great, and very little; very rich, and very poor. (Thomas Spence, 'A Letter from

Ralph Hodge, to his Cousin Thomas Bull, in The Political Works of Thomas Spence, ed.

H. T. Dickinson. Newcastle: Avero, 1982, p. 22).

In contrast to the theory of 'trickle-down economics', Spence insisted that a more equal division of property was the way to ensure that all had the necessities of life. Under the heading 'A Lesson for Antigallicans' he reprinted the following extract from a contemporary pamphlet in his journal Pigs' Meat:

Title page of Thomas Spence’s periodical Pigs’ Meat (London, 1793). Copy from the Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Reprinted with kind permission.

if property were divided with any tolerable equality, a man would begin by

providing amply for his support, comfort, and enjoyment; and would only suffer

the surplus to be exchanged for foreign superfluities; nor would he for superfluities

condemn himself to incessant labour. (Thomas Spence, Pigs' Meat. London, 1793, p.

18)

Similarly in an earlier work of his own, in which he imagined an island society where land was owned collectively, Spence has his narrator observe of the island:

instead of anarchy, idleness, poverty, and meanness, the natural consequences I

narrowly thought of a ridiculous levelling scheme, [there is] nothing but order,

industry, wealth, and the most pleasing magnificence. (Thomas Spence, A

Supplement to the History of Robinson Crusoe. Newcastle upon Tyne, 1782, p. )

On what grounds did these thinkers argue that excessive inequality is bad for society? They claimed that as the gap between rich and poor increases, the pursuit of money comes to be valued more than the promotion of the common good. As a result, wealth starts to be viewed as a marker of merit regardless of the means by which that wealth was gained. In the language of the eighteenth century, people start rising to power simply because they are rich rather than because they are virtuous. Looking at the world today, I cannot help feeling that we are well past that point.

For eighteenth-century thinkers, the solution to this problem was easy to understand, though not necessarily straightforward to implement. If excessive inequalities of wealth within society were dangerous to the public as a whole, then it was incumbent on the government to introduce some degree of redistribution of wealth to keep those inequalities in check. This would ensure that the government operated in the public interest.

Image of Spence from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with kind permission.

Spence took a rather extreme view of what this government intervention should involve. While he did not call for the abolition of moveable property, believing this was a spur to industry, he did insist on the communal ownership of land (organised at the level of the parish). That proposal was ridiculed in his own time and seems even less like a workable solution today. But we do have a ready-made system that is designed to allow the government to redistribute wealth in the interest of the public good and to keep a check on the inequalities of income between the richest and poorest in society. That system is income tax. What a shame Rachel Reeves did not find the courage to pull that lever last week.

A Tale of Two Thomases: Part 2

Last month's blogpost focused on the dissemination of political texts - in various forms - by two seemingly very different eighteenth-century figures - Thomas Hollis and Thomas Spence. This month's post will show that the parallel between these two men ran even deeper. They both recognised that if the texts they disseminated were to have an impact, attention had to be paid to the linguistic skills of their audience - in particular the capacity to read proficiently and to speak and debate effectively.

John Wallis by David Loggan, 1678. National Portrait Gallery: NPG 639. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

In late June 1760, Hollis first broached the idea with the printer and bookseller Andrew Millar of reprinting John Wallis's Grammatica linguae anglicane (1653), which offered an introduction to English grammar for those with knowledge of Latin. Hollis linked this proposal directly to his wider political project. The volume would be 'for the benefit of Foreigners, and the spreading of the principles of truth and Liberty'. (The Diary of Thomas Hollis, ed. W. H. Bond. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996. p. 36. 28 June 1760). As discussed in last month's blogpost, Hollis sent various English political texts abroad with the aim of advancing liberty. If the recipients were to make good use of them, they would need an understanding of the English language. Hollis emphasised this point in a handwritten inscription that he added to the copy of another work, the Bibliotheca Literaria, which he sent to Harvard College in 1767. Having sent books on government, he explained, he then sent: 'Grammars, Dictionaries of Root and other Languages, with critical Authors; in hope of forming first rate Scholars, the NOBLEST of all Men!' (William H. Bond, "From the Great Desire of Promoting Learning": Thomas Hollis's Gifts to the Harvard College Library. Cambridge: Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 34). He also drew up a list of 'books favourable to Liberty, and ingenuous actions' to be placed at the end of the Wallis edition to further cement the connection between language and politics. (The Diary of Thomas Hollis, p. 220. 24 November 1764). Having commissioned the edition of Wallis's work, Hollis then distributed copies of it very widely, including sending a copy with the donations of political books that he sent to key institutions abroad. The larger donations that he made to Harvard and Bern also included other linguistic works such as John Wilkins, An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language (1668) and Robert Bellers, The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747).

Thomas Spence, The Grand Repository of the English Language (Newcastle, 1775) in which he set out his phonetic alphabet. Image by Rachel Hammersley from the copy held at Newcastle City Library. Reproduced with kind permission.

Spence, too, recognised the connection between language skills and political understanding. In the 1770s he designed a phonetic alphabet which he continued to promote even after his move to London - printing several of his own works in this distinctive format. Whereas Hollis's priority was providing linguistic texts so that foreigners could benefit from works printed in English, Spence's main concern was the labouring classes in England 'who generally cannot afford much time or expence in the educating of their children, and yet they would like to have them taught the necessary and useful art of reading and writing' (Thomas Spence, The Grand Repository of the English Language. Newcastle upon Tyne, 1775, Preface). For Spence, as for Hollis, the ultimate goal was the promotion of liberties and rights. Spence was explicit that his phonetic alphabet would allow 'the very poorest' to acquire 'such Notions of Justice, and Equity, and the Rights of Mankind, as rendered unsupportable every Species of Oppression' (Thomas Spence, The Real Reading-Made-Easy. Newcastle, 1782, pp. 41-2).

Bern, Universität Bibliothek, ‘Die Hollis-Sammlung 79(3) A List of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London, 1759). Reproduced with kind permission. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2025.

While both men clearly placed great emphasis on the written word, they also saw the benefits to be gained from people gathering together in societies to discuss ideas. Hollis was a committed member of several London-based societies, and he enthusiastically promoted them elsewhere. His decision to send books to the public library at Bern in Switzerland was partly motivated by the establishment there in 1759 of 'Die Oekonomische Gesellschaft' (The Economic Society) which was aimed at bringing about improvements to the canton and operating as a channel for the reception of new ideas from abroad. Hollis wrote to his local contact, Rodolphe Vautravers, the following year noting his delight that the society was flourishing (A. Thirouard Wyss, The Hollis Collection in Berne, p. 24). Among the parcels of books Hollis sent to Bern he included not only works on agriculture and husbandry, that spoke to the aims of the Bern society, but also works on societies themselves including Histoire de l'academie Royale des sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Thomas Birch's The History of the Royal Society and A copy of the royal character and statutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1765 members of the societies at Bern and Biel sent Hollis a report of their activities as thanks for his support. Rather than keeping the report, he sent it on to the American colonies in the hope of encouraging the establishment of similar societies there.

The only known surviving copy of Spence’s original lecture at the Newcastle Philosophical Society in 1775. From the Anthony Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

Spence too both participated in and organised gatherings to discuss ideas from an early age. Moreover he continued to do so even after his less than positive early experiences. Spence was expelled from the Newcastle Philosophical Society in November 1775 having delivered a lecture entitled 'Property in Land Every One's Right', which he then had printed for circulation. Around the same time, he formed a debating society of his own, which met at the school he taught at on Broad Garth, Newcastle. One evening they debated his ideas about property in land but the other young men at the society - including Spence's friend Thomas Bewick - were not convinced, and the debate went against Spence. Afterwards Spence accused Bewick of betraying him and challenged him to a fight. After moving to London, Spence joined the London Corresponding Society (LCS). In the spring of 1793 his shop was named as a venue where an LCS petition in support of parliamentary reform could be signed (Mary Thale, Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 1792-1799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 57 and 60-61.) Again, his involvement in the Society got Spence into trouble; he was arrested alongside other members of the LCS on 20 May 1794 and was imprisoned until December. Yet Spence remained undeterred. In March 1801 a meeting was held at which 'Citizen Spence's theory of Society' was endorsed, and it was resolved that supporters of the system would meet in small numbers 'after a free and easy manner' to discuss those ideas (British Library: Add. MS. 27 808, 201 and 203). An advert in a collection of Spence's songs also promoted Spence's ‘free and easy’ gatherings, which were held at the Fleece on Little Windmill Street on a Monday or Tuesday evening at 8pm

Both Hollis and Spence, then, seem to have been committed not just to spreading political ideas in print, but also to facilitating the exchange and discussion of ideas in person in dedicated societies. This meant that they were concerned not only with the development of reading and writing skills, but also with those associated with speaking and listening.

It would be easy to downplay these aspects of their projects - and even to dismiss them as further evidence of the eccentricities of these two men. Yet their concern with language skills - and their sense that improving those skills was crucial to the preservation of liberty and challenging inequalities - speaks to current concerns and connects to another of my activities.

In 2018 an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Oracy was established in Parliament, with the aim of 'helping every child [to] be a confident communicator and find their voice' (https://www.marjon.ac.uk/research/knowledge-exchange/Oracy_APPG_InterimReport_Dec20.pdf) The APPG defined Oracy as: 'the ability to speak eloquently, to articulate ideas and thoughts, to influence through talking, to collaborate with peers and to express views confidently and appropriately'. It also recognised the importance of Oracy for improving attainment in schools, preparing students for future study and careers, and for citizenship and empowerment. Finally, the group noted marked differences in Oracy skills arising from social background, and observed that the language gap had widened as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These findings chime with my own experience as a university lecturer. While the university students are some of the brightest, there is generally still a marked difference in Oracy skills depending on education and social background. Seminar teaching is a crucial component of university education - especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Successful seminars require students to express their own opinions and interpretations of the material they have read. They need to be able to speak fluently, to listen carefully, and to debate sensitively and constructively. Yet, over the years, students have seemed less and less willing to participate in seminars. Some simply do not turn up at all, and others attend but do not contribute to the discussion. Recent focus-groups conducted as part of an Oracy project at Newcastle University found that, while the majority of the students questioned were confident when sharing their ideas in small groups with people they already know well, they were much less confident when speaking in front of the whole class - or even in small groups with people they did not already know. Those of us involved in the project (which includes academics from several different disciplines, school teachers and the educational outreach team from the University Library with support from the charity Voice 21) will be testing strategies for improving the Oracy skills of our students and sharing our findings with each other. I would like to think that Hollis and Spence would approve.

June Blogpost: A Tale of Two Thomases: Part 1

Thomas Hollis and Thomas Spence were very different men, but as readers of this blog will be aware, I have recently been exploring the lives and works of them both.

Thomas Hollis by Joseph Wilton, marble bust, c.1862. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 6946. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Hollis was born in London on 14 April 1720. His family had made their fortune in the metalworking industry in Yorkshire and had then established a London branch of their cutlery business. Hollis was an only child and was unfortunate in losing most of his close relatives before the age of eighteen. One consequence of this was that by the time he was thirty he was an extremely rich man. Hollis travelled extensively in Europe in the late 1740s and early 1750s before settling in London. Though he briefly toyed with a political career, he soon turned to pursuing politics via other means. Physically, Hollis was described as being over six-feet tall and very strong. He had 'bright brown eyes, a short nose, and laughing mouth' (Colin Bonwick, 'Hollis, Thomas (1720-1774), political propagandist, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 19 May 2025). Hollis retired to his estate in Dorset in 1770, where he died four years later

Profile of Thomas Spence from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with kind permission.

Spence was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 21 June 1750. His father and mother were of Scottish origin and Spence was one of nineteen children. Despite being poor, Spence's father was keen that his sons should learn to read, and by his early twenties Spence was working as a school teacher in Newcastle. He moved to London in early 1788 where he worked as a bookseller for the rest of his life. He produced radical tracts of his own which he sold alongside those by others. The nature of his work got Spence into trouble, and he was arrested on a number of occasions. Physically, Spence was a short man - barely five-feet tall and slightly built. His life-long poverty meant that he was always poorly dressed, and he suffered from both a limp and a speech impediment. Spence was married twice - once in the north east and once in London - but neither marriage was happy. His son William, who moved with him to London, died as a teenager around 1797. Spence himself died in September 1814.

Despite these striking differences in their appearance, backgrounds, and prospects, these two men devoted their lives to very similar activities.

Bern, Universität Bibliothek, ‘Die Hollis-Sammlung’ 64. The Oceana and other works of James Harrington Esq, ed. John Toland (London: A. Millar, 1747). Reproduced with kind permission. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2025.

Hollis distributed thousands of books to a range of public and university libraries between 1754 and 1774. Some of the books were simply bought by Hollis in London and sent on. Some had gold tooling added to their front cover or spine, others were specially bound for the purpose. In a small number of cases, the edition itself was commissioned by Hollis before being bound and sent. As a bookseller struggling to make a living, Spence disseminated books but was not in a position to give them away for free. Instead, he offered his own variation on Hollis's project in the form of his journal Pigs' Meat which appeared between 1793 and 1795. Here, for the price of just a penny an issue, readers had access to extracts from a range of texts.

There was significant overlap in the works the two men disseminated. Both focused on politics and religion and had a particular interest in the writings of seventeenth-century republicans, as well as in the eighteenth-century commonwealthmen who applied earlier republican ideas to their own circumstances. The importance of these works to Hollis is reflected in his decision to commission new editions of some of these texts - for example Sidney's Discourses - and in the exquisite bindings of the works of Sidney, John Milton, Edmund Ludlow, and James Harrington that he sent abroad. Spence included extracts from works by Sidney and Milton in Pigs' Meat, but it was Harrington who was the most frequently cited author across the three volumes, closely followed by the commonwealthmen John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.

The title page of the edition of Sidney’s Discourses commissioned by Hollis with the smoke printed image of the pileus at the bottom. The National Library of Scotland: ([Ac]. 1/1.3]). Reproduced with kind permission. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2022.

The header to Pigs’ Meat.

Hollis's lavish bindings reflect another parallel between the two men: their concern with the appearance - as well as the content - of works, and their use of symbolic images to convey ideas. Hollis claimed that while he did not value bindings himself, he saw the importance of them in rendering texts of interest to others. There appears to have been some truth in this, since the members of the Council of Bern were persuaded to accept Hollis's donation of books because of the beauty of the volumes. The gold tooling that Hollis added to the cover and spines of the volumes he sent had symbolic meaning - the pileus to indicate liberty, the owl for wisdom, and Britannia for works of patriotic value. Sometimes (for example in the case of the Sidney edition commissioned by Hollis) these symbols were also smoke printed onto the page. Once again, Spence's poverty meant he did not have the same opportunities available to him. Yet the pig image used on the title page of the second edition of Pigs' Meat served a similar purpose. Moreover, it too included a pileus or liberty bonnet that closely resembled that used regularly by Hollis.

The Three Thomases coin owned by the author. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2025.

Both men also conveyed their political messages in metal as well as print. Hollis bought, commissioned, and disseminated medals alongside books. Spence described himself as a 'Dealer in Prints & Coins' and designed his own tokens - including one depicting three Thomases (though sadly Hollis was not one of them). Moreover, while Spence could not afford to give books away, a contemporary claimed that he tossed tokens out of the window and that passers by who picked up a token could then exchange it at his shop for a pamphlet (British Library: Add. MS. 27,808, 184). He also gave away a token free with each copy of the first issue of his final periodical The Giant Killer or, Anti-Landlord.

Despite their differences, then, both Spence and Hollis made extensive efforts to disseminate political ideas to a wide audience. Moreover, they did so because they believed that this would bring wider societal benefits. While there were differences in their political perspectives, they were both committed to ensuring that the public had access to republican ideas and those in support of liberty and rights. This was reflected in the dedication Hollis used in various forms in the works he donated:

Thomas Hollis, an Englishman, a Lover of

Liberty, his Country & its excellent

Constitution as NOBLY restored at the happy

Revolution, is desirous of having the

honor to present Milton's Prose Works to the

Public Library of Harvard College, at

Cambridge in New England.

Pall Mall, oct. 14, 1764 (Bond, p. 135).

An Englishman, a lover of liberty, civil & religious, Citizen of the World, is desirous

of having the honor to present this book to the public library at Berne in

Switzerland.

London jan 1, 1765. (Bern, Universität Bibliothek, 'Die Hollis-Sammlung' 71).

Elsewhere he explained that he sent books on government: 'for, if Government goeth right, ALL goeth right.' (Bond, p. 34).

On the title page to Pigs' Meat, Spence asserted a similar aim. The works collected in the periodical were designed, he 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, Volume 1. London, 1793, Title page).

There might be a temptation to dismiss both Hollis and Spence as at best naïve and at worst eccentrics or cranks. Yet it is hard to deny that informed citizens are necessary for the preservation of liberty and the successful functioning of democracy. It is especially important to remember this at the present time when education seems to be under threat from all directions - from cuts in school budgets to threats of compulsory redundancies in higher education. I suspect that Hollis and Spence would be appalled.

The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought

The author’s copy of Eric Nelson’s book. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I am currently co-teaching a module on 'The Scientific Revolution'. Consequently, Isaac Newton's famous comment to Robert Boyle about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' was already in my mind on 15th February when I attended a symposium at St Andrews. This was organised by Ariane Fichtl to discuss Eric Nelson's important book The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, which was first published 20 years ago. In his remarks Eric commented that he had wondered beforehand what he would like to hear from those who were gathered to discuss his book. He quickly realised that, while being told 'you were right' would be flattering, it would also be rather disappointing. What he was hoping for, then, was for his book to have provoked thought and discussion and that the conversations inspired by it were still ongoing.

Of course, as Eric would be the first to note, he was himself standing on the shoulders of giants. This point was made explicitly in Quentin Skinner's opening paper in which he presented a useful typology of scholars. There are, he argued, supporters (who champion the work of those who have gone before) and challengers. The challengers can then be divided into contradictors (who insist that those who have come before have got it wrong) and supplementers (who praise past work, while suggesting that something important has been missed). The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, Quentin suggested, is a good example of this last approach.

Quentin Skinner speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Prior to the publication of Eric's book, work on republicanism - including that of Quentin Skinner himself - had tended to emphasise the Roman origins of early modern republican thought. On this account, the ultimate purpose of life was to attain honour or glory. Crucial to this pursuit was a view of liberty as independence, which was grounded in the fundamental Roman distinction between a free person and a slave. What characterised a free person was that they were not dependent on the will of anyone else. This entailed living under the rule of law (not the arbitrary will of a sovereign) and having influence over the making of those laws (whether directly or via representatives). Moreover, those laws ought to protect the life, liberty, and property of the citizens, so that the understanding of justice at the heart of this Roman conception of republican rule involved 'giving each their due'.

What Eric had noticed was that while this Roman version of republicanism was certainly influential in early modern Europe, it was not the only one. Alongside it there developed an alternative understanding of republican rule that was more indebted to Greek sources. Here the aim was not for citizens to attain honour and glory, but rather to achieve happiness. Consequently, the emphasis was more on the contemplative than the active life. Liberty on this account involved not being enslaved to passion, but being ruled by reason and therefore by individuals who were themselves rational and virtuous. Yet authors in this tradition noted that a threat was posed to this ideal when individuals were able to accumulate wealth, creating a significant gap between rich and poor. Under these circumstances wealth would tend to be valued above virtue, causing corruption. Consequently these authors insisted not on the protection of private property, but rather accepted some measure of redistribution in order to maintain the balance required to ensure the rule of reason and virtue. On the Greek account this balance, or right ordering of the system, was what constituted justice.

Francesco Patrizi. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In his book, Eric identified Thomas More, James Harrington, the baron de Montesquieu and others as exemplifying - and developing - this Greek tradition. As Eric himself noted, one way in which the conversation he initiated has been continued is through additions to the tradition. Several papers adopted this approach, proposing figures who did not appear in The Greek Tradition for inclusion. In other words, there was further supplementation.

James Hankins put the case for Francesco Patrizi of Siena. Patrizi drew on recently translated Greek material and adopted a Greek view of private property in line with the model set out in The Greek Tradition. According to Hankins, Patrizi drew a clear distinction between the social hierarchy, where wealth and ancestry were key, and the political order - which should be organised according to virtue and merit.

The grounds for including Patrizi within the Greek tradition seem relatively straightforward. Filippo Marchetti and I made the case for figures whose inclusion is less so, but who nonetheless pose interesting questions for the tradition. Filippo's paper focused on Alberto Radicati of Passeran. He explored the intertwining of republicanism and deism in Radicati's thought, arguing that he had an ethical preference for democracy. In my paper I considered the late eighteenth-century radical Thomas Spence. Spence was directly inspired by Thomas More and James Harrington, and like them he proposed restrictions on landed property to secure a fairer government and society.

A sketch of Thomas Spence's profile from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

Adding new individuals to traditions often highlights new dimensions. The discussion generated by these and other papers emphasised the importance of education, religion, and democracy

In his discussion of Patrizi, James Hankins noted Patrizi's belief that virtue and merit could be stimulated by education in the classics. A similar claim was made by Isabelle Avci in her paper on Thomas More's biography of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Noting that Pico was a controversial figure, and therefore a curious choice for More, she argued that he helped More to address the question of how an individual could maintain virtue while pursuing a political career. For More, as for Pico, education - and, in particular, reading - facilitated the cultivation of virtue through access to the divine. This offered More a means of combining the active and the contemplative life - treating them as complementary - rather than facing a strict choice between the two. Eric had already noted the importance of education in his book and it was crucial to Spence too. In contrast to Patrizi, however, who insisted that all citizens should be taught Latin to break the monopoly of the rich on a classical education and therefore on virtue, Spence and his associates sought instead to render a classical education unnecessary by ensuring that individuals could learn to read, speak, and write just as effectively without this form of learning.

This rejection of the classics could be a reason to exclude Spence from the Greek tradition, along with his democratic bent. As Eric explained, while the Greek tradition does involve the deployment of radical means - in the form of state redistribution of property - it does so in the pursuit of hierarchical ends - namely the rule of those with reason and virtue. Consequently, democracy, despite its Greek roots, was not central to Eric's book - only featuring towards the end in the discussion of a late adaptation of the Greek tradition in Alexis de Tocqueville's reflections on America.

Eric Nelson speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Yet several contributors to the symposium explored the theme of democracy, suggesting that it perhaps has more to contribute to the Greek tradition than might initially be thought. In part this is because two types of democracy emerge from the Greek sources. Extreme democracy, which was the focus of Eero Samuel Arum's paper, builds on Aristotle's account of democracy in Book 4 of the Politics, and describes a society in which the multitude has control over the laws. By contrast, restricted democracy draws on Aristotle's notion of politeia. Here sovereignty lies with the people, but virtuous magistrates are chosen by them to rule. The paper demonstrated that Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty is indebted to this idea. It was also, as Markku Peltonen showed, much discussed by political scientists working in the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period. Most accepted it as a viable form of government (in contrast to extreme democracy, which they firmly rejected) and some even saw it as the best form. What this tells us, as Markku highlighted, is that representative democracy did not - as was conventionally claimed - emerge fully formed in the age of the democratic revolution, but had its foundations in this tradition. Interestingly, this is also a topic that Eric himself explored in more detail in his Seeley Lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge in 2024.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, c. 1797. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1237. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Building on this democratic theme, several papers considered how Greek ideas could be deployed to justify a widening of the political nation. Hannah Dawson argued that while the Greek tradition looks on the surface to be hostile to women, some early modern feminists quickly found a loophole that they could exploit to argue their case for inclusion. While the notion that the intellectually and morally superior should rule was widely used to exclude women from politics, figures like Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft questioned whether those men who currently hold power are entirely rational and, therefore, fit to rule. Conversely, on this account, rational women should be equally capable of political participation. Hannah also noted that the Greek idea of the contemplative life also offered something to women who could see their minds as free even when constrained under a patriarchal system.

Eran Shalev also touched on the opening up of politics and education to women in his paper on the democratisation of the American Republic in the nineteenth century. His main point, though, and one which was also emphasised in Becca Palmer's paper on debates in colonial American newspapers in the period 1765-1775, was that Greek ideas - and especially the example of Athens - offered a model for democratisation and empowerment.

Ariane Fichtl speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Finally three papers looked more explicitly at how the Greek tradition provided practical tools for use in different times and places. Mishael Knight argued that the enclosure commissioner Sir John Hales used Appian's account of ancient agrarian laws to inspire and justify sixteenth-century English agrarian policy. Hales explicitly rejected the Roman notion that justice required giving each their own, insisting instead that redistribution was justified in order to prevent a great distinction between rich and poor. In her closing keynote, Ariane Fichtl showed how the Greek tradition also offered a tool for abolitionists in their development of strong philosophical arguments against slavery. Aristotle's ambiguity on slavery made it possible for abolitionists to use his notion of legal slavery in the Nicomachean Ethics to condemn slavery as tyranny while firmly rejecting his argument in the Politics about the existence of natural slaves. Moreover, unlike its Roman equivalent, the Greek tradition did not insist on an absolute division between dependence and independence, opening the way for the powerful idea of interdependence. Finally Marijn Nolmans's paper suggested that the Greek tradition might offer an alternative to Rawlsian liberalism today. He argued that a combination of the neo-Roman idea of political liberty, Aristotle's notion of human flourishing, perfectionism, and justice understood as the fair distribution of resources, could produce an ideal political society that would not only be free and just, but could also facilitate the flourishing of citizens and encourage excellence in a wide variety of domains.

As can be seen from this, Eric can be assured that conversations sparked by The Greek Tradition have not been exhausted yet

Some of the speakers from the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

A Twenty-First-Century Spencean

A photograph from one of my early modern runs. Image by Rachel Hammersley (2005).

As regular readers of this blog will know, I enjoy running. I particularly enjoy running along the seafront near to my home. Not surprisingly it is a popular place to run and I regularly spot the same people out enjoying their own early morning exercise. One of the characters who always makes me smile is the man my daughter and I call 'Tories Out Man'. For weeks in the run up to the 2024 General Election he would run along the seafront wearing a black tee-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Tories Out' in large white letters. On being offered any sign of encouragement from those running in the opposite direction he would smile, raise a clenched fist and shout 'Tories Out'. As I worked on my paper for the Radical North conference that I reported on last month, it struck me that this man is adopting a twenty-first-century example of the kind of methods that Thomas Spence used more than two hundred years ago to disseminate political messages.

An original copy of Spence’s lecture ‘Property in Land Every One’s Right’ from the Hedley papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

While living in Newcastle in the 1770s Spence came to the conclusion that the oppression and poverty that he saw around him could be eradicated if the land was owned not by individual landowners but collectively by local residents. In a lecture that he delivered to the Newcastle Philosophical Society on 8th November 1775, he set out his vision for how this plan could be enacted. Each parish would form a corporation, composed of all adult males who had been resident within the parish for at least a year. The corporation would take ownership of the land within the parish, renting out portions of it for cultivation by local residents. The rents paid for use of the land would replace taxes, providing revenue to cover central government charges and to fund local facilities and services. Having composed this potentially transformative plan, Spence was keen to share it in the hope of having it implemented. For the rest of his life, he deployed various means of sharing his land plan with as wide a public as possible.

Immediately after delivering his lecture Spence had it printed, incurring the anger of members of the Philosophical Society who did not want to be publicly associated with Spence's ideas. Another printed version appeared under the title 'The Real Rights of Man' in Spence's Pigs' Meat periodical in 1795. Yet Spence was not content with simply reprinting the lecture, in addition he produced multiple versions of the plan in a variety of written forms. He incorporated it into works of utopian fiction in A Supplement to the History of Robinson Crusoe (Newcastle, 1782), 'The Marine Republic' - which appeared in Pigs' Meat in 1794, and Description of Spensonia (London, 1795). Several of these works also made use of dialogue form to address potential objections to the plan. He also presented his ideas in A Letter from Ralph Hodge, to his Cousin Thomas Bull (London, 1795), which adopted the epistolary form and concluded with a series of questions and answers. In addition he produced two model constitutions The Constitution of a Perfect Commonwealth (London, 1798) and The Constitution of Spensonia (London, 1803), and he printed two accounts of trial proceedings against him - The Case of Thomas Spence (London, 1792) and The Important Trial of Thomas Spence (London, 1803) both of which again served as vehicles for him to disseminate his ideas. Presenting his plan in different forms - and especially using genres like utopian fiction and dialogue that engaged the imagination - was a way of reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Nor did Spence limit himself to texts that were designed to be read. He also wrote songs which again conveyed his ideas, but which could be shared in political meetings and gatherings, making them more accessible to those who were unable to read. The songs were to be sung to familiar tunes such as 'Hearts of Oak' and 'Derry Down'. Some were even set to well-known patriotic tunes including 'Rule Britannia' ('The Progress of Liberty', 1793 and 'The Liberty of the Press', 1794) and, most provocatively, 'God Save the King' ('Rights of Man', 1793). This was a deliberately subversive act - in which Spence filled an establishment vessel (the tune of the national anthem) with his own radical content.

One of Spence’s counter-stamped coins. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Spence performed a similar act of subversion with coins. After his move to London he began counter-stamping coins of the realm. In this case the establishment vessel was a coin bearing the image of the King's head and Spence's radical content was the subversive slogan which would be stamped across it. The example illustrated here shows a coin from the reign of George III that has the phrase 'NO LANDLORDS YOU FOOLS SPENCES PLAN FOREVER' obscuring the King's head.

A Spence token celebrating the Rights of Man owned by the author. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Spence also produced coins or tokens of his own which he was said to toss out into the street, so that local people could pick them up for free and then exchange them at his shop for a pamphlet. Again the tokens generally reflected Spence's ideas, such as the one bearing the slogan 'Man over man he made not lord'. They were also explicitly used to advertise his pamphlets. The reverse of the token just described advertises Spence's Pigs' Meat while another, which depicts two men throwing title deeds onto a bonfire, bears the label 'The End of Oppression' which was the title of another of Spence's works. Spence also used tokens to commemorate his own experience of oppression or that of others - such as John Thelwall and George Gordon - or to comment on current affairs.

It was not only via paper and metal that Spence conveyed his ideas. He etched his slogans wherever he could. In 1780 he visited a former miner known as 'Jack the Blaster' who lived in a cave at Marsden Rock on the coast between South Shields and Sunderland. The cave or grotto still exists and currently houses a bar. 'Jack the Blaster' had apparently gone to live at Marsden Rock having not been able to afford the rent on a more conventional home. Spence claimed that this inspired him to chalk the following words above the hearth:

The bar inside Marsden Grotto. Image by Rachel Hammersley (2022).

Ye landlords vile, whose man’s place mar

Come levy rents here if you can,

Your steward and lawyers I defy

And live with all the Rights of Man.

(Thomas Spence, 'The Rights of Man for

Me', in his Pigs Meat (London, 1794-5),

Volume 3, p. 250)

On this basis Spence claimed to have coined the phrase 'the Rights of Man' more than ten years before it became associated with Thomas Paine. Decades later, Spence's followers were said to have chalked Spencean phrases on the walls around London. The Home Secretary reported that "Spence's Plan and full Bellies", and other similar messages, had appeared "on every wall in London" and in 1816 William Cobbett wrote to Henry Hunt saying:

We have all seen for years past written on walls in and near London the words

'Spence's Plan' and I never knew what it meant until ... I received a pamphlet from

Mr. Evans ... detailing the Plan very fully. (Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. London,

1820, p. 381).

I cannot help but think that had custom-printed tee-shirts been available in Spence's time, he would have had one printed with a suitable slogan and would have worn it (and urged others to do so) on the streets of London and his native North East.

For those wondering what happened to 'Tories Out Man' in the aftermath of the election, I am pleased to say that he is still running along the seafront. When we saw him in December he was wearing a new tee-shirt which read 'Tories Outed, 2024'!

The Radical North, 1779-1914

The image of a Spence token sent to me by Malcolm Chase. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I start with a marvellous coincidence. At the end of November, I spoke at the symposium 'The Radical North, 1779-1914' which was organised at the University of Leeds, under the auspices of Northern History and with support from the Social History Society, to celebrate the life and work of Professor Malcolm Chase (1957-2020). As I began preparing my talk on Thomas Spence and the political culture of late eighteenth-century Newcastle, I spotted the photograph of a Spence token on the shelf beside my desk and thought I could use it as one of the illustrations. As I removed it from its frame I noticed that there was a message on the back and I realised that the photograph had been sent to me and my then husband, John Gurney, by Malcolm himself in 2007 as a 'New Year's Gift'. Though I have often looked at that photograph while working, I had completely forgotten that it was Malcolm who sent it to us. It seemed highly appropriate that I should have remembered as I began writing the paper, and I felt both Malcolm and John would have approved of my decision to dig more deeply into the life and times of Thomas Spence.

The symposium was a fitting tribute to Malcolm. It included excellent papers on topics ranging from Christopher Wyvill's Yorkshire Association to the legacies of Chartism in Lancashire, and the radical verse of the Pitman Poets. As always, what follows are my own reflections on the papers and the discussions they sparked.

Callum Manchester offered a thoughtful paper on the Yorkshire Association, which reminded us all of the problems associated with using the term 'radicalism', especially for the period before it was coined in 1819. As Callum explained, Christopher Wyvill is especially problematic in this regard because, while he fits neatly with some elements of the definition of a radical - in his sympathy for Dissenters; his staunch opposition to placemen and pensioners in the House of Commons; and his call for parliamentary reform - in other respects he does not. Callum's solution to this problem was to suggest that radicalism is not just about aims but also the methods deployed to achieve them. He argued that Wyvill's methods were moderate rather than radical, and presented him as taking a middle way between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

Christopher Wyvill by Henry Meyer, after John Hoppner, 1809. National Portrait Gallery NPG D4946. reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Callum's paper set a helpful framework for what followed, not least in encouraging us all to pay attention to labels and their applicability to particular individuals and groups. One particularly curious label that featured in several papers was 'Tory Radical'. It has been used to refer to 'the Factory King' Richard Oastler, who was the subject of Vic Clarke's paper. Oastler was a staunch campaigner against cheap factory labour and exploitation, and yet he worked closely with the Tory MP Michael Sadler in the General Election campaign of 1837, and even stood as a Tory candidate for Huddersfield himself. As Vic explained, Oastler's apparent political ambiguity was mirrored - and perhaps prompted - by his social ambiguity. His background as a steward at Thornhill made it possible for him to engage with both mill owners and factory workers, and to build networks across class and political lines. Later in the proceedings, Christopher Day noted that the label 'Tory Radical' has also been applied to James Heaton of Clitheroe, who deployed Chartist methods - including mass petitioning, fly posting, and organising public meetings - in resisting the Public Health Act of 1848.

In his paper, Andrew Walker spoke in more general terms about the celebration of 'Old Chartists' in the northern press in the last forty years of the nineteenth century, noting that some of these men had become more conservative over the years leading to them being described by some as 'Tory Chartists'. Finally, something similar is perhaps evident in the life of the pitman poet Lewis Proudlock, who was the focus of Jordan Clark's paper. Though a promoter of the rights of working people, Proudlock took great inspiration from Jacobite myths, not least the story of Amelia Radcliffe. The political status of Jacobitism in different contexts has been of interest to me ever since I came across Jean-Jacques Rutledge (a Franco-Irish Jacobite) who featured prominently in my first book. It was, therefore, interesting to see how this ambiguity played out in a Northumbrian context.

In the discussion, we agreed that rather than dismissing the notion of Tory Radicals as an oxymoron, we ought to take such labels seriously. The figures of the past do not always neatly fit the pigeon-holes into which later scholars want to put them. Paying attention to how they viewed themselves - in all its complexity and ambiguity - may reveal important things about their aims and methods.

Some of these so-called Tory Radicals also share something else in common, in being what we might think of as footnotes to history. Malcolm himself had a fascination for those obscured in the conventional historical narrative, and it was therefore appropriate that several such figures featured in the papers presented at the symposium.

A copy of John Marshall’s The Northern Reformer’s Monthly Magazine from 1823. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, Special Collections, Rare Books (RB 941.074 NOR). Reproduced with permission.

John Marshall, who was the focus of Harriet Gray's paper, is a good example of a forgotten radical. Marshall was a printer, bookseller, and librarian who lived and worked in Gateshead and Newcastle around the turn of the nineteenth century. He had links to better known radical figures including Eneas Mackenzie and William Hone, but Marshall himself is not well known and information on him is sparse. Nonetheless, Harriet did an excellent job of piecing together the evidence that does exist. Her paper, which was paired with my own on Thomas Spence, illuminated the political culture of the north east in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and demonstrated the various ways in which Marshall continued to disseminate Spencean ideas - via Spencean methods - long after Spence's own departure to London in the late 1780s.

Though living and working half a century later, and being based in Sunderland rather than Newcastle/Gateshead, Thomas Dixon - who was the focus of Joy Brindle's paper - reminded me a little of Marshall. He too was a disseminator and seller of books, but he also emphasised the importance of moving from thought to action. A distinctive element of Dixon's activity, which Joy explored in detail, was his letter-writing. He built up a large network of correspondents, which included several well-known figures. In his letters, as in his dissemination of books, Dixon's aim was to bring about tangible improvements to the working lives of those living in his locality.

The aim of improving the lives of working people also lay behind the petitions sent to Parliament from the north of England in the late nineteenth century, which were the subject of Henry Miller's paper. Most of the signatories to these petitions are complete 'unknowns', and yet in the words of the petitions we can hear the voices of ordinary people, thereby learning of their grievances and political concerns. Much the same is true of Martin Wright's account of the Northumberland miner's strike of 1887 and its impact on the wider socialist movement.

Richard Oastler, by James Posselwhite, after Benjamin Garside, 1841. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D7845. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Another factor linking many of these obscure figures - and the papers at the symposium - is the important role played by religion in inspiring radical thought and action. Spence, Marshall, and Oastler were all driven by their faith, and referred to religious ideas and arguments directly in their writings. Other papers explored the influence of religious belief in more general terms. Andrew Walker paid attention to the impact of Methodism on the Chartists, while Tobin O'Connor offered a fascinating paper on the Labour Church in the 1890s. He argued that although it only lasted for a short time, and was quickly forgotten, it nonetheless provided an important path into the Labour movement for many working-class northerners.

Several of those who spoke specifically about Malcolm, referred to the importance to him of the connection between education and politics, and his commitment to sharing his knowledge with audiences beyond the academy. This was, of course, reflected in his first job at Leeds University in the Centre for Continuing Education, but he sustained his commitment to it long after transferring to the School of History. Katrina Navickas showed that, for Malcolm, politics and education were integral to each other, while Matthew Roberts and Robert Poole noted that he always wrote in a way that would engage the general reader and adapted his work to the interests and concerns of his audience.

Laura Foster also addressed the relationship between education and politics in her fascinating paper on reading and rambling groups such as the Eagle Street College in Bolton and the Clarion Sheffield Ramblers. Both clubs combined the reading and discussion of literature with walking in the countryside. Laura argued that in organisations such as these, participants created a space of pre-figurative politics in which the friendships and communities that were forged operated as a kind of microcosm of an ideal state.

This sense of creating an ideal politics through 'doing' is something that Malcolm Chase achieved in his own life and work - as was evidenced in the heartfelt testimonies offered by many of the participants. He was, his former colleague Laura King told us, a 'different kind of professor'. Though a talented and productive historian, he did not conform to the conventional academic and institutional hierarchies. He was consistently supportive of students and early career researchers. Pretty much everyone in the room appeared to have had the experience of a conversation with Malcolm about a current research project being followed up with a package of relevant material. In my case, I had simply presented a paper on Jean-Paul Marat's time in England to the History seminar at Leeds, which Malcolm had attended. A week or so later I received in the post a collection of ballads and offprints relating to Marat in Newcastle. I was neither a student nor a colleague of Malcolm's, and yet he treated my research with the same interest and generosity as those with whom he had closer connections.

Nor was it just those within the Academy who reaped the benefits of Malcolm's immense learning and kindness. He regularly spoke to non-academic audiences, ranging from parliamentary MPs to local history associations and adult education classes. Moreover, he genuinely acknowledged and valued the knowledge and expertise of those audiences. Malcolm's commitment to making historical and political knowledge widely accessible echoes the behaviour of many of the figures discussed at the symposium. Spence deliberately employed innovative methods - such as tokens, songs, and graffiti - to spread his ideas widely. Similarly, Marshall used his circulating library to make books available to the people of Gateshead, and Dixon often wrote letters to acquire key books for the people of Sunderland. Malcolm, then, embodied the marriage of scholarship and public engagement - of thought and action - that the figures he wrote about, from Spence to the Chartists, would have recognised and applauded.

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.

The Materiality of Early Modern Political Texts - 2

In my last blogpost, I noted the point made by one participant at our Experiencing Political Texts workshop in York, that the correspondence of early modern men and women has been viewed differently. Whereas that of men who participated in politics has been read as a political text, that of women (even powerful and influential women) is often dismissed as gossip. That observation led me to ponder what makes a text political. Katie East addressed this point explicitly in her paper at the second part of our workshop on the materiality of texts, which took place on 28 March 2023. This is one of three themes that I want to explore here that arose out of the papers delivered on that day. The other two are the methods used by early modern authors to control or delimit the meaning of their text, and the survival of ephemeral texts.

Painting of Cicero denouncing Catiline and his conspiracy. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

As Katie made clear, the political nature of a text is determined by several factors. Conventionally emphasis is placed on the content of the work and the intention of the author as well as the interventions of editors, commentators, or translators. Yet, as she explained, two other factors also play a critical role. First, the context(s) in which the work is written, printed, and read, and secondly the materiality of the text itself. Both Katie's paper and those that followed offered several illustrations of how context and materiality can enhance a text's political character.

Katie's paper focused on accounts of the Catiline conspiracy in ancient Rome that were published during the early modern period. She demonstrated how that story was given a new political edge: both during the Jacobite uprisings of the early eighteenth century, and in the chaos generated by the financial collapse of the South Sea Company. In her paper, Alex Plane showed how works that might be deemed apolitical in one context, could take on a political meaning in another. This was the case with the works on duelling held in the library of James VI and I. James was keen to establish his reputation as a peacemaker, yet this was undermined if members of the nobility were killing each other in duels rather than settling their issues via formal legal means. Duelling became a political matter, therefore, so too did the possession of books about it.

Sketch of Thomas Spence’s profile. Taken from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with the permission of the Society.

Explicitly political works could also have their political edge heightened by being read in new contexts. Harriet Gray demonstrated this with reference to Thomas Spence's political works. Though Spence died in 1814, members of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society felt the need to distance themselves from his ideas in 1817 due to both the campaign against the Society of Spencean Philanthropists in London and the activities of their own librarian John Marshall, who showed marked sympathy for Spencean ideas.

Titlepage from Thomas Gordon’s edition of Sallust. Taken from Eighteenth-Century Collections Online.

Perhaps more surprising are the ways in which the materiality of a text could render it more or less political. Katie showed how even just the title page could emphasise or de-emphasise the political nature of Cicero's speeches on the Catiline conspiracy - or be used to encourage a particular reading of them. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed various accounts of the conspiracy, including both those that used it to call for loyalty to the existing (monarchical) regime and those that adopted a republican reading. The addition of paratextual material such as dedications and, in the case of Thomas Gordon's translation of Sallust's historical account, overtly 'political' discourses on the text, could further heighten its political character and/or a specific interpretation. Even the layout of the text on the page could contribute to this. Gordon deliberately adopted a clean, classical, layout to push his political message. This was in contrast to the busier appearance of scholarly editions which encouraged a more contemplative reading.

Page from John Spittlehouse’s pamphlet The Royall Advocate which includes the marginal note ‘Jesus Christ was no Quaker’. Taken from Early English Books Online.

Leanne Smith furthered our consideration of page layout by showing how the Fifth Monarchist John Spittlehouse deliberately used the white space at the edges of a page to draw the attention of his readers to key passages and to direct their understanding. His pointed comments in the margin alongside his account of Oliver Cromwell's speech to Parliament on 4 September 1654 encouraged readers to question Cromwell's actions and motives. While comments in the margin of The Royall Advocate such as 'Jesus Christ was no Quaker' sought to turn his readers against that radical sect.

The page from The True Patriot’s Speech at Rome which gives the false imprint. Taken from Early English Books Online.

Finally, Joe Hone showed us how even something as apparently innocuous as the imprint could enhance the political character of a text. His paper focused on the short pamphlet The True Patriot's Speech to the People of Rome. Though printed in London in 1708, the imprint read 'Amsterdam, 1656'. Joe argued that 'Amsterdam' was used repeatedly around this time as shorthand to indicate the republican or anti-monarchical content or implications of certain texts. In this sense it was not a way of avoiding censorship (as might be thought) but rather a declaration of allegiance. Similarly, dating the pamphlet '1656' suggested its relevance to the period of the English republic, and encouraged the audience to read it as a counterpart to key republican texts such as James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana and Marchamont Nedham's The Excellencie of a Free State, both of which appeared that year.

Ben Jonson’s poem ‘To Groom Idiot’ taken from https://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/groomidiot.htm

We have already seen, with reference to Leanne's paper, how the materiality of the text could be used to encourage a particular political reading of it. This point was explored from a different perspective in Ruth Connolly's discussion. Ruth showed how Ben Jonson made careful use of punctuation to contain and control the meaning of his works. First, he made clear his expectation of readers in his poem 'To Groom Idiot', which criticises the eponymous recipient of the poem for failing to understand the punctuation of his works and for laughing in the wrong places. By this means Jonson created expectations as to how his works should be read. Secondly, Ruth used several specific examples to illustrate how a subtle change in punctuation - for example from a colon to a question mark - could alter the meaning of the text - and even how in a letter to Cecil from 1605 a colon was used to imply a meaning that was not explicit in the written words. Despite being very different kinds of writers, both Jonson and Spittlehouse used technical features of their texts to direct the reader's response. This is, of course, something we also see being used much more systematically in the elaborate bindings produced by Thomas Hollis for the works he disseminated, and in the marginal notes he added to those texts, which I explored in a previous blogpost.

The copy of Thomas Spence’s lecture held among the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with the permission of the Society.

Finally, having been prompted by the papers delivered at York to think about the ephemerality versus the durability of early modern texts, I was interested to hear in the final panel about examples of ephemeral texts surviving under what might seem strange circumstances. Alex Plane explained that there is in James VI and I's Library an edict against duelling issued by Louis XIII of France in 1613. This is exceptionally rare - indeed it appears to be the only surviving copy. Its presence in James's library is probably due to Henry Howard, who was commissioned by James to write a work for him that was critical of duelling. To prepare for this task, Howard produced a common place book on the subject, and probably collected the edict as part of an information gathering trip to France. In her paper Harriet Gray reported that ephemeral material relating to Thomas Spence and John Marshall (including the only extant copy of Spence's original lecture 'Property in Land Everyone's Right' and Marshall's Newcastle Swineheard's Proclamation) can be found among the papers of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Their survival is due to the concern among members to distance the Society from both Spence and Marshall, it is even possible that placing the texts in the collection was more about hiding them than preserving them (or at least about controlling the context in which they were read). They were not easy to locate or access  - as reflected in the fact that the Spence pamphlet was only discovered in 2005.

In my reflections on the first part of our workshop, I suggested that it had enhanced my understanding of how political works were produced and read in the early modern period. The second part deepened this, not least in encouraging me to think more about early modern cultures of reading and writing. Both Jonson and Spittlehouse took great care to guide their readers. Alex's description of James taking his courtiers on what were effectively writing retreats and having them surround him at dinner to discuss recently published pamphlets and draft responses to them, suggests a different kind of reading and writing culture from the image of an author sitting at a desk scribbling in the margins. Do we also, then, need to think again about our own cultures of reading and writing? What do readers need to know in order to properly to understand modern political texts?

Fifty Years of the World Turned Upside Down

Is what I am doing worthwhile? How can I make a difference? I often ask myself these questions. They feel especially pressing in the midst of the current cost of living crisis, in the face of impending environmental disaster, and in a situation of growing inequality both within Britain and between us and the global south. In this context, writing books and articles on obscure early modern figures and their ideas - and teaching classes to students who are relatively privileged - can feel self-indulgent. It was, therefore, reassuring to learn from Penny Corfield, at a recent conference to celebrate 50 years since the publication of The World Turned Upside Down, that the eminent early modern historian Christopher Hill was troubled by these questions too. Like me, Hill was no doubt partly prompted by the inspiring phrase from Gerrard Winstanley, which I have quoted before in this blog: 'action is the life of all, and if though dost not act, though dost nothing' (Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, London, 1649).

The programme for the conference, which was expertly organised by Waseem Ahmed in conjunction with John Rees.

In his excellent paper on Hill's life and thought, which marked the culmination of the conference, Mike Braddick explained that as a young man in the 1930s Hill was already 'thinking like a Marxist' but did not yet know what to 'do'. Of course, he soon found his role. As Mike explained, writing history was Hill's contribution. As one obituary of him noted, Hill was 'an historian's historian' and yet works like The World Turned Upside Down spoke not just to academics, but also to ordinary people. Moreover, as Ann Hughes explained in her paper, Hill also reached out in many different ways to a wider public through his involvement with organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association, the Open University, and the BBC. I was bemused to learn that Hill's piece 'James Harrington and the People' was originally written for radio. Oh if only someone would commission a radio programme on Harrington today! Similarly John Rees reported, on the basis of his own experience, that Hill was always happy to be associated with the organised left and gave inspiring speeches to large crowds.

There is an interesting parallel between Hill's commitment to venture beyond academia, presenting his historical research (and that of others) to the general public, and the subject matter of The World Turned Upside Down. That book took seriously the ideas of ordinary people. Its protagonists are not the 'great' thinkers of the seventeenth century but rather the ordinary people (some of them very humble indeed) who were caught up in events. Hill was interested in ideas that inspire practical political action, regardless of the social status or level of education of those who voiced those ideas and took that action.

A poster advertising the film Winstanley about the Digger movement, one of the key groups to feature in Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down. Author’s own copy.

This focus was reflected in several of the papers at the conference, including papers that dealt with figures who feature in The World Turned Upside Down and papers on those who perhaps should have done, but do not. It was apt to have Ariel Hessayon talking about the Ranters and Bernard Capp to say something about the Fifth Monarchists. Ariel contextualised Hill's account of the Ranters in The World Turned Upside Down and emphasised the fact that the strength of Hill's book lay in making these rather obscure figures visible. He also noted that Hill came to the Ranters quite late. Capp extended this point, acknowledging that the radicals are not prominent in many of Hill's earlier works such as The English Revolution 1640 and The Century of Revolution (though this partly reflects the nature of those publications). Capp also suggested that the Fifth Monarchists and Muggletonians ranked lower in Hill's estimations than the Ranters and the Diggers, not least because their ideas did not all sit comfortably with his understanding of radicalism.

Author’s copy of Hill’s book showing the tub-thumping preacher on the cover.

Several speakers made the case for particular individuals to be considered as radicals. Jackie Eales's paper focused on the radical preacher James Hunt of Sevenoaks, who does not appear in The World Turned Upside Down despite probably being the tub-thumping preacher on the cover of the original edition. Jason Peacey argued the case for George Wither and asked the thought-provoking question: How would our view of radicalism change if Wither were taken more seriously? Ed Legon's paper focused on individuals even more obscure than Hunt and Wither, textile workers-cum preachers such as one Thomas Moore, 'Dingle', and others for whom we do not even have a name. The link between textile workers and radical puritanism has long been recognised, if not fully explored, but other speakers found radicals in even more unexpected places. Will White made the case for the neutral Francis Nethersole as a radical of sorts. He pointed out that refusing to take sides was itself a political act, which might lead to disobedience and required considerable courage. He also noted the similarities between ideas put forward by Nethersole to justify his neutrality and those expressed by the Leveller William Walwyn in The Bloody Project. The fluidity implicit in Walwyn's position (and acknowledged by Hill) was also reflected in the activities of another Leveller, Captain William Bray, who was the subject of Ted Vallance's paper. Ted showed how Bray haunted the boundary between the Levellers and the Ranters. In part, this fluidity stems from thought being geared to political action, since engaging in politics (rather than merely contemplating it) may require pragmatism: deploying different arguments for different audiences; rearranging priorities in response to events; and even setting aside key principles at certain moments.

The image of the world turned upside down from the pamphlet of the same name.

This leads to another point that was reflected in both Hill's life and his work. The importance of free and open debate, and even the possibility that ideas might be changed through it. As Ann, John and Mike all noted, Hill experienced this himself in the debates in which he engaged as a member of the Communist Party Historians’ Group between the late 1930s and 1957. The idea of open debate was also reflected in papers that themselves turned conventional interpretations upside down. For example, Richard Bell showed that the interest of key Levellers in prisons was not a case of them bringing political consciousness to prisoners, but rather of the Levellers tapping into a long-standing campaign for prison reform. Similarly, Laura Stewart made a convincing case for the notion of a Scottish Revolution, emphasising the need for it to be understood on its own terms.

Laura's paper was one of many that either ventured beyond Hill's field of enquiry or even challenged key aspects of his thought. As Penny Corfield made clear, Hill would have enjoyed and appreciated the debate. He welcomed respectful disagreement on the grounds that thinking could be advanced in the process. As Mike explained, the members of the Communist Party Historians’ Group were not aiming to impose an orthodox view of the English Revolution but rather engaged in lengthy, deep and open discussion to try to work out the relevance of Marxist theory for English history. For Hill it was important that ideas were debated and kept in use.

Sketch of the bust of Thomas Spence. From the collection of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Hedley Papers. Reproduced with kind permission. With thanks to Harriet Gray.

The conference papers and discussions certainly inspired me, helping me better to understand and articulate the meaning of my own life and work. I too am committed to analysing not simply the ideas of great political thinkers of the past, but also those of ordinary people caught up in events. My PhD research examined the ideas of relatively humble French revolutionaries who were members of the Cordeliers Club, and considered the ways in which they adapted English republican ideas to their own situation. In my current research I am exploring how reformers and radicals in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain articulated their arguments. In this regard, the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence is of particular relevance. Despite being from a very humble background, Spence developed innovative political ideas of his own and believed strongly in the value of providing political education to all members of society, regardless of their wealth or social status.

At the same time, I am committed to engaging with audiences beyond academia. I have been involved with a number of exciting projects alongside our excellent educational outreach team from Newcastle University's Robinson Library and staff at the National Civil War Centre. Our current project involves working with Year 12 students on oracy and debate. Meanwhile, the Experiencing Political Texts project (https://experiencingpoliticaltexts.wordpress.com) has provided an opportunity to work with members of the public in a regular reading group where discussions are always thought-provoking. We will develop this further as we put together two exhibitions, one at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University this summer and another at the National Library of Scotland, opening in December. Finally, this blog has provided a valuable opportunity to share my research with a wider audience, but also to reflect on the implications of the ideas of the past today. I can only dream of producing a book like The World Turned Upside Down, but by taking seriously the ideas of all people - including those who have so often been silenced - perhaps I can make a small contribution and heed Winstanley's injunction to 'act'.

The Power of Editors

Last month's blogpost centred on the radical periodicals produced by Thomas Spence and Daniel Isaac Eaton during the 1790s. This month I am extending that discussion by considering Spence's role as editor, and his use of his position to curate the words of others in such a way as to advance his own political ideas.

Spence’s Lecture, ‘Property in Land Every One’s Right’. From the collection of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Hedley Papers, Volume 1. Reproduced with kind permission.

Pig's Meat was composed almost entirely of extracts from a variety of political texts. Spence chose his extracts carefully, deliberately presenting key political themes. Prominent among these were: the importance of free speech and thought; the rights of man; and the superiority of republican over monarchical government. But Spence's main concern throughout was the oppression of the poor by the rich.

That theme also lay at the heart of Spence's Land Plan, which he first set out in a lecture to the Newcastle Philosophical Society on 8 November 1775. He argued that, in the state of nature, land was shared equally among all inhabitants for them to use to secure their own subsistence. On this basis, he insisted that 'the land or earth, in any country or neighbourhood, with everything in or on the same, or pertaining thereto, belongs at all times to the living inhabitants of the said country or neighbourhood in an equal manner' and that the state ought to protect this right to land (Thomas Spence, 'Property in Land Every One's Right'). In reality, however, land had been claimed by a few and divided among them for their own ends, making others dependent on them for subsistence. This injustice had been perpetuated through inheritance and purchase. Although this was the current state of affairs, Spence argued that things could be different if people were to acknowledge the injustice and take action. He suggested that each parish could form a corporation with the power to let, repair, or alter any part of the land, but without the power to sell the land. Individual inhabitants would pay rent to the parish for a portion of the land and those rents would be used to provide local and national amenities.

The section ‘Lessons for Monopolisers of Land’ from Thomas Spence, Pig’s Meat, Volume 1 (London, 1793). Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Rare Books RB 331.04 PIG. Reproduced with kind permission.

Throughout his lifetime, Spence produced a number of his own works (including political pamphlets, fictionalised utopias or travel writing, and even songs) which presented the key elements of his plan. The plan is also central to Pig's Meat, but here it is presented not in Spence's own words, but through those written by others. We can see how he does this by focusing on several extracts that appeared in the eighth issue (in autumn 1793). Under the title 'Lessons for Monopolisers of Land', Spence presents two biblical quotations. The first, which comes from Leviticus chapter 25, presents the Jewish idea of Jubilee. This required that every fifty years land within the state would be redistributed, reflecting the notion that the land belonged to God and was only granted to the people for their use. The second, which comes from Isaiah (chapter 5, verse 8), condemns those who parcel up land for themselves leaving none for others. These biblical passages are immediately preceded by an excerpt from the works of Jonathan Swift entitled 'An unpleasant lesson for the pigs' betters', which argues that those who enjoy wealth and power in society gained - and maintain - their position by vicious means, including incest, betrayal, poisoning, perjury and fraud. The biblical passages are then followed by an extract from the works of Samuel Pufendorf, to which Spence gives the title 'On Equality. From Puffendorf's Whole Duty of Man, according to the Law of Nature'. This passage includes the line: 'no man, who has not a peculiar right, ought to arrogate more to himself than he is ready to allow his fellows' (Thomas Spence, Pig's Meat, Volume 1, London, 1793, p. 91). Together, these passages reinforce key elements of Spence's Land Plan: that the land and the fruits thereof should benefit all members of society; that the current possessors of land have gained and maintained their position via unseemly means; and that it is possible (as in the example of Jubilee) to overthrow an unfair system.

Presenting what was a controversial plan via the words of others had obvious advantages for Spence, who was at this point an unknown London bookseller, recently arrived from Newcastle. Spence gives the impression that his Land Plan was in line with the views of serious political philosophers such as Pufendorf and respected authorities such as Swift. By labelling the Pufendorf extract 'On Equality' Spence was, of course, reinforcing this point. The inclusion of biblical quotations was another clever move. It simultaneously showed the poor that their cause was in line with the word of God (giving them greater confidence to assert their rights) and alerted wealthy elites to the fact that in oppressing the poor they were disobeying biblical injunctions and therefore God.

Spence’s ‘Rights of Man’ song from Pig’s Meat. Volume 1 (London, 1793). Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Rare Books RB 331.04 PIG. Reproduced with kind permission.

Very occasionally, Spence includes his own writings among the Pig's Meat extracts. The first volume includes a couple of his songs, and a version of his Plan in question and answer form. Here too, the juxtaposition of the extracts serves a deliberate purpose. Spence's first song appears immediately after an extract from John Locke's Two Treatises of Government; his second, between an extract from James Harrington and a speech by Oliver Cromwell; and the question and answer piece is sandwiched between two biblical quotations. By this means, Spence implies that his works are on a par with the texts surrounding them, thereby giving his works greater power and authority than if he had simply presented them in a pamphlet bearing his own name.

I discussed these ideas at a recent workshop on 'The Role of the Editor' at Newcastle University. Just as Spence's words gained greater power by being set alongside those of others, so my thoughts on this topic were enriched by listening to the other speakers.

The titles of the papers in the programme immediately raise questions about what we mean by 'editing'. The speakers discussed various examples including: authors editing of their own texts (Emily Price on William Lithgow, Joe Hone's paper which drew on evidence from proof copies); those editing texts written by others (Katie East on early modern editions of Cicero's works, Filippo Marchetti on John Toland's editions of the works of Giordano Bruni); the curation of a range of other 'texts' in periodicals and miscellanies (Kyra Helberg on the Lancet, Tim Somers on jestbooks); and even the editing of an archive (Harriet Gray on the Hedley Reports of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society). By the end of the workshop we were wondering whether it would be better to think of editing as a task that various people undertake rather than a job title assigned to specific individuals.

Title page of the Hedley Papers. From the Collection of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Reproduced with kind permission.

Just as the notion of an 'editor' proved more slippery than we had appreciated, so too the 'audience' to which editors addressed their works was far from static. Anthony Hedley may originally have produced the reports on the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society for himself (they appear to have only been presented to the Society by his daughter after his death) or at most as working documents for a small number of Society members. As Harriet Gray noted, this might explain why he was able to include details of controversies relating to the Society which were kept out of more public accounts. In his paper, Filippo Marchetti observed that Toland had more than one audience in mind when seeking to spread knowledge of Bruno's works, and that he deliberately produced different versions of the text for different audiences - adjusting the wording and accompanying evidence accordingly. Where Toland produced different texts for different audiences, Thomas Wakely (the subject of Kyra Helberg's paper) sought to address several different audiences through a single publication. The Lancet was intended for the medical profession (including both surgeons and students) but there is also evidence that it was directed towards - and read by - the wider public. As Emily Price's paper demonstrated, editors were not always in control of their audiences. She showed how Lithgow's travel narrative was originally directed towards members of the Court as a vehicle for advancing Lithgow's career and furthering anti-Catholic arguments, but that after his death it became a forerunner of the Baedeker or Rough Guide for travellers to the Continent.

There was also much discussion of particular editorial techniques, with a plethora of these on display in the papers. Katie East suggested that the context in which particular texts appeared could significantly affect how they were read - and even whether a particular text was considered 'political' or not. Cicero's speeches on Catiline were presented to early modern audiences in a range of formats: including in editions of Cicero's speeches; in collections of ancient speeches by various orators; in compilations of Cicero's works; in collections presenting historical evidence relating to the Catiline conspiracy; and even as interventions in contemporary political affairs, such as the South Sea Bubble. In each case the setting will have affected how the speeches were read. Both Harriet and I addressed the role that curation - and especially the juxtaposition of particular texts - can play in presenting a particular reading of an event or text. Emily and Tim both provided examples of adapting a text to fit new circumstances. And Kyra showed that Wakley was not above inventing correspondents to the Lancet to introduce particular topics or pursue his own ends.

The title page of the first edition of Gulliver’s Travels. Image courtesy of Joe Hone.

Finally, Joe Hone provided more insight into the question hovering over much of our discussion, namely how we can be sure of precisely who was responsible for editorial decisions in any given case. Emily had noted that Lithgow was away on his second voyage in 1614 when the first edition of his work appeared, and she wondered how his absence affected his editorial input. Joe demonstrated that the issue is complex. He showed us proof sheets in which an author insisted that particular words be rendered in italics - suggesting a high level of authorial intervention was possible. Yet he also explained how Jonathan Swift was furious when his printer removed the sharpest satirical barbs from the first edition of Gulliver's Travels, without informing him before publication. Of course, in most cases we simply do not have the evidence to be sure where responsibility lay. Yet, as the workshop made abundantly clear, there is much to be gained from thinking more deeply about editorial activity, and how this has shaped the documents that scholars use as evidence.

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:

Entangled Histories of Revolution

We are very conscious today of living in a global world. Thanks to economic, cultural, and military ties our daily lives are deeply entangled with those of others in distant places, most of whom we will never meet, whether individuals like key politicians, groups such as workers in various industries, or international corporations. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the notion of Entangled History is currently popular. Entangled History adopts a trans-cultural perspective and explores the interconnectedness of societies. It starts from the assumption that nations, empires, and civilisations were not formed independently but rather through a process of interaction and global circulation. The revolutions of the late eighteenth century are particularly amenable to this approach. While the French Revolution took place within an existing nation state, its origins, the ideas on which it was grounded, the unfolding of events, and its legacy were all impacted by cross-cultural relationships and exchange. Other revolutions of the period - including the American Revolution - were even more deeply embedded in global networks.

One important mode of cross-cultural interaction during this period was translations - including of earlier radical texts or contemporary revolutionary documents as well as newspaper accounts of the unfolding events. The 'Entangled Histories of Revolution' workshop that took place at King's College London on 4-5 November 2022 sought to explore this mode of entanglement more deeply. The workshop forms part of the Radical Translations project led by Sanja Perovic, Erica Mannucci and Rosa Mucignat, which is exploring the transfer of revolutionary culture between Britain, France and Italy in the period between 1789 and 1815.

Sadly, a combination of threatened train strikes and family circumstances meant that in the end I could not travel down to London as planned, but had to be content with participating remotely on the Saturday alone. Given how stimulating the papers I heard were, I greatly regretted having missed the first day of the workshop. But, necessarily, my comments here focus only on the papers from 5th November.

These papers led me to think about three distinct, but related, themes. First, the idea raised explicitly by Sanja Perovic, of translation as a method of responding to cultural problems. Sanja noted that revolutions, by definition, involve taking new paths and therefore facing uncharted territory. In these circumstances, looking to other times and places could offer helpful models - or to continue the metaphor, maps - for revolutionaries to use; and translations were often the vehicle by which such maps were conveyed.

In my paper I quoted Pierre-François Henry, who translated James Harrington's works during the 1790s, voicing this idea explicitly:

The troubles of the French Revolution resemble so closely those of the English Revolution, that those who wish to determine causes from effects will not do much better than studying the latter to better understand the unfolding of the former. (Pierre-François Henry, ‘Preface’, to Oeuvres Politiques de James Harrington. Paris, L’an III).

Oeuvres Politiques de Jacques Harrington, ed. P.-F. Henry (Paris, L’an III). Image by Rachel Hammersley, reproduced with permission from the copy held at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

Similarly, in his paper, Richard Whatmore spoke of a widespread concern in the early nineteenth century to find an alternative to the British mercantile model, and here too the experiences of other countries as reflected through translations were seen as providing a useful source of inspiration and direction.

Translators were also well placed to become mapmakers themselves. In her paper on the French reception of the American Revolution, Carine Lounissi noted that the linguistic skills of French translators gave them privileged access to primary sources, putting them in a strong position to assess and write about the unfolding events in the Americas. More dramatically, several of the speakers provided examples of translators deliberately radicalising particular texts and authors. Sonja Lavaert described how Lucilio (Guilio Cesare) Vanini deliberately reversed the message of anti-Machiavellian texts that he translated, and she also suggested that we might usefully understand the radical clandestine text L'Esprit de Mr. de Spinosa as offering a radical reading of Thomas Hobbes through the lens of Spinoza and Vanini. Similarly, I showed in my paper how two different readings of Harrington - one centrist and one more democratic - were offered in the translations of the 1790s, and that both countered the more conservative reading of him that was typical in eighteenth-century France.

A second point that emerged from the papers was that translations are collaborative projects. Even single-authored works in a particular language are the work of a team comprising printers, booksellers, and editors who work alongside the author, each contributing directly to the text in different ways. Where translation is involved, the team has to be even wider. Every translation is effectively a co-authored work, with the original author and the translator both fundamental to the message that is conveyed. This is even more true of translation campaigns, such as those led by the Baron d'Holbach in the 1760s and 1770s, or that of the Comte de Mirabeau in the 1780s, which involved an even broader workshop of contributors.

A token advertising Thomas Spence’s periodical Pig’s Meat taken from https://www.marxists.org

Several of the papers spoke about works that were collaborative in a second sense - in that they comprised extracts from a variety of original texts. This was the case with L'Esprit de Mr. de Spinosa in the early eighteenth century and with radical periodicals like Pig's Meat that appeared in the 1790s. In both cases the drawing together of extracts created a work greater than the sum of its parts. Sonja Lavaert used the term 'combat manifesto' in relation to L'Esprit, a term that is equally applicable to the radical periodicals of the 1790s.

The third theme that spoke to me from the papers was the idea of knowledge itself as a revolutionary force; not least in the sense that keeping people ignorant is a way of keeping them down; whereas informing or educating them about politics provides them with the tools to combat oppression. This point was emphasised by Sonja Lavaert in her discussion of the radical Enlightenment. She quoted Jonathan Israel on d'Holbach's belief that it was impossible to improve human life without 'teaching men the truth'. Moreover, the suggestion was that this should extend to all: 'What greater insult to the human race can there be than to claim reason is reserved for some' while all the rest are not made for knowledge? (Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment. Oxford, 2012, p. 27).

This commitment to educating all people, and encouraging them to think, meant directing works explicitly at ordinary people rather than just at educated elites. Lavaert suggested that there is already some evidence of this with Henri de Boulainvilliers's version of L'Esprit de Mr. de Spinosa, which presented Spinoza's ideas in a less dry and more accessible language. But it was more pronounced by the 1790s when the Italian translation of that work was produced. This translation, Lavaert explained, was part of a deliberate pedagogical project.

I have demonstrated in a previous blogpost that the audiences at which the republican writings of the mid-seventeenth century were directed expanded during the course of the eighteenth century. As participants at the workshop made clear, this was part of a broader process which was reflected in several shifts during the course of that century.

In the first place there was a linguistic shift. This was not just about a move from Latin to the vernacular, but also from major to minor languages. Mary-Ann Constantine's paper, for example, noted the translation of radical texts into Welsh in the 1790s. As one commentator pointed out, this shift was symbolic as well as practical, indicating the capacity of the target language to receive new concepts and, by implication, a belief that Welsh speakers were capable of engaging with and understanding complex new ideas.

William Linton’s The National: A Library for the People. Frontispiece and contents page reproduced from http://www.hathitrust.org.

Secondly, expanding the audience for key political texts meant making those works and the ideas contained within them available in accessible formats. In part this meant the production of cheap and affordable editions. Equally important, however, was the dissemination of extracts from key texts in cheap periodicals - and even the presentation of key ideas in broadsheets, poems, and ballads. This innovation could also be combined with the first, as was the case with the Welsh-language periodicals produced by dissenting ministers - to which Mary-Ann referred - which were modelled on Thomas Spence's Pig's Meat and offered their audience a mix of educational material, religious fare, and extracts from radical political texts.

As Ian Haywood showed in the final paper of the day, these formats were further developed in the early nineteenth century. Editors like William Strange and William Linton were crucial in this regard, producing cheap publications that anthologised and excerpted relevant texts. In doing so they effectively created a radical canon of political texts; indeed, the subtitle to Linton's periodical The National was 'A Library for the People'.

They also worked to boil down the ideas to their very essence. As Ian noted, Linton's The National included various short extracts including a single sentence from The Ruins of Empire by the French author the Comte de Volney (a key text within the radical canon). Linton was quick to defend his brevity, promising that even the shortest extracts were not mere fillers 'but often the one line may contain as much wisdom as all the rest of the number'.

Volney’s Les Ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires (Paris, 1791). Reproduced from http://gallica.bnf.fr. This was a key text in the radical canon, extracts from which regularly appeared in cheap periodicals.

Of course, it was not only the radicals who were keen to 'educate' the masses. As Mary-Ann Constantine suggested, works like Hannah More's Village Politics which, was also translated into Welsh, was intended to serve as a kind of prophylactic against dangerous radical and revolutionary texts.

Translations, translators and even knowledge itself, then, could be revolutionary forces. Perhaps this offers hope in our own deeply entangled world.

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.

British Republicans 2: Richard Carlile

The first volume of Richard Carlile’s periodical The Republican. Bodleian Library: Johnson e.3662 Photograph by Alex Plane, courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries.

On Friday 27 August, 1819, there appeared the first issue of a journal entitled The Republican edited by Richard Carlile. Its publication was a direct response to the Peterloo Massacre that had occurred just under two weeks before. Despite the header declaring it to be 'No. 1. Vol. I.', this was not, in fact, an entirely new journal but, as the editorial explained, the continuation of Sherwin's Weekly Political Register, which had been appearing for several years.

The change of title was, however, deliberate. Carlile was publicly identifying as a 'republican'. In his address to readers that prefaced the first volume he took pains to explain his understanding of the term. Noting that 'it has been the practice of ignorant or evil-minded persons' to associate republicanism purely with 'the horrors of the French Revolution' he urged his readers to look more closely at the etymology of the word. A republican government, he explained, is one 'which consults the public interest - the interest of the whole people' (The Republican, I, 'To the Readers of the Republican'). This, as I have argued in a previous blogpost, accorded with the traditional understanding of the term dating right back to ancient times. Yet, because Carlile was writing in the early nineteenth century, he was well aware of the additional connection that had been forged between republicanism and anti-monarchism. He engaged directly with this point, arguing rather cleverly that: 'Although in almost all instances where governments have been denominated Republican, monarchy has been practically abolished; yet it does not argue the necessity of abolishing monarchy to establish a Republican government.' In truth, Carlile believed that securing government in the public interest required a proper system of representation and that if this were to be introduced the abolition of monarchy was likely to follow. Nevertheless, his understanding of the double meaning of 'republican', and his emphasis on establishing government in the public interest rather than simply abolishing the monarchy, indicates continuity with the longer history of English republican thought.

Thomas Paine by Laurent Dubos, c. 1791. National Portrait Gallery. NPG 6805. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Carlile also associated his ideas more directly with those of earlier English republicans. He was a committed disciple of Thomas Paine and was responsible for printing and disseminating Paine's works. He was also an admirer of Thomas Spence, declaring that Spence's Land Plan was 'the most simple and most equitable system of society and government that can be imagined' and that it was 'a subject' about which it was 'worth thinking, worth talking, worth writing, worth printing' (Richard Carlile, Operative, 3 March 1839 as cited in Malcolm Chase, '"The Real Rights of Man": Thomas Spence, Paine and Chartism', in Rogers and Sippel (eds), Thomas Spence and His Legacy: Bicentennial Perspectives, special issue of Miranda 13 2016, pp. 3-4). Spence was himself a disciple of the seventeenth-century English republican James Harrington, and Carlile too made frequent reference in his writings back to the period of the Stuarts. He implied that the tyranny enacted by his own government at Peterloo and in its aftermath was similar to that performed by Charles I and his sons. In an open letter to the Prince Regent, which appeared in the second issue of The Republican, he warned the Prince that if he failed to deal justly with the perpetrators of the Peterloo massacre then 'the fate of Charles or James, is inevitably yours. And justly so.' (The Republican, No. 2 Vol. 1. 3 September 1819). Carlile also celebrated the heroic martyrs of the period, including John Hampden and Algernon Sidney.

Carlile repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to act as a martyr to liberty and to sacrifice his own personal freedom in the greater cause by stoically enduring repeated prison sentences. He was imprisoned for his role in publishing Paine’s works in 1819 soon after launching The Republican. This image was produced to celebrate his release six years later. ‘On his liberation after six years of imprisonment’ (Richard Carlile) by an unknown artist, 1825. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D8083. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

More substantively, The Republican echoed earlier English republican works in celebrating both civil and religious liberty, and in emphasising the interrelationship between the two. In the very first issue, Carlile explicitly declared his willingness to submit to martyrdom 'in the cause of liberty' and in the second issue he accused the despots of Europe of seeking to: 'abridge and destroy the liberties of their subjects, and to make their own authority absolute' (The Republican, No. 1 Vol. 1, 27 August 1819 and No. 2 Vol 1, 3 September 1819). Of particular importance to Carlile were the liberties of free speech and freedom of association. What was particularly galling about the Peterloo Massacre was that the individuals who had been killed had simply been enacting their right, under the British constitution, 'to assemble together for the purpose of deliberating upon public grievances as well as on the legal and constitutional means of obtaining redress' (The Republican, No. 5 Vol. 1, 24 September 1819). Such actions were necessary in Carlile's eyes because, like earlier British commonwealthmen, he believed that the British constitution had become corrupt and its balance disturbed. Echoing the late seventeenth-century thinker Henry Neville, Carlile argued that the balance of the constitution lay too much with the monarch and that too little power was wielded by the House of Commons. It had once dominated the other branches 'but that controul is quite destroyed, and through the influence of Boroughmongering, they are become the base and contemptible tools of every vicious faction that can get into power' (The Republican, No. 4 Vol. 1, 17 September 1819).

Richard Carlile, by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1435. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Again like earlier English republican authors, Carlile was adamant that citizens should enjoy religious as well as political liberty. Echoing John Milton and other so-called 'godly republicans' of the mid-seventeenth century, he insisted on a clear and complete separation between church and state: 'I maintain on this head, that no government should legislate as to what shall or shall not be the religion of its subjects; or what differences should exist in their creeds' 'an established priesthood, of whatever tenets, is incompatible with civil liberty' (The Republican, I 'To the Readers of the Republican'). Yet in terms of his own personal religious convictions, Carlile had less in common with the 'godly republicans', instead taking the path previously developed by John Toland and his associates at the turn of the eighteenth century, whereby rabid anti-clericalism morphed into deism and even atheism. All forms of religion, Carlile declared, are 'an imposture and fraud practised by base and designing men on the credulous part of mankind' (The Republican, No. 2 Vol. 1, 3 September 1819). By publishing the controversial theological works of Paine, Carlile hoped to be able to emancipate minds from the slavish fears associated with Christianity (The Republican, No. 6 Vol. 1, 1 October 1819). Carlile's readers expressed similar views. In a letter that appeared in the second issue, Joseph Fitch of Old Road Academy, Stepney, praised Carlile for the patriotic firmness with which he faced tyranny after being charged with sedition for publishing the theological works of Paine. He urged those who saw the views voiced by Carlile as a threat to the state to stop being 'the voluntary dupes of priestcraft and corruption' and he ended by urging support for the cause of 'civil and religious liberty' (The Republican, No. 2 Vol. 1, 3 September 1819).

While the continuities between Carlile's understanding of republicanism and that of his predecessors are striking, he also introduced new elements. He was more critical than most earlier English republicans (with the exception of Spence) of the unjust inequalities between rich and poor. In issue six he attacked the 'Prince and Ministers, Sinecurists and Pensioners, Borough-mongers and Fundholders, Bishops and Parsons, Judges and Lawyers' for attacking the lower orders and seeking to keep them down (The Republican, No. 6, Vol. 1, 1 October 1819). He also championed the rights of other marginal groups within society, even asserting that women ought to be accorded political rights (The Republican, No. 5. Vol. 1, 24 September 1819).

Carlile's writings, and the continuity of his arguments with earlier English republicans, challenge the common assumption that the English have no sustained republican tradition. In fact, there is a rich and vibrant vein of republican thinking in this country, one that has been flexible enough to adapt to a variety of different circumstances and issues. The optimism and energy of Carlile's writings stemmed from his firm conviction that the unjust political system of his own day could be completely overturned if only the franchise were extended and the poor were given the vote. On this point history has proved Carlile wrong, which poses challenging questions for democratic republicans today. 

British Republicans 1: Charles Bradlaugh

When writing Republicanism: An Introduction I had to address what happened to republican ideas during the nineteenth century (beyond my usual area of expertise). I chose to focus on France, Britain and the United States. In the process I discovered several interesting nineteenth-century British republicans. I am continuing to investigate some of these characters for other projects. In this blogpost, and some that follow, I will offer brief sketches showcasing these figures and their ideas.

Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) was a self-confessed republican who established the National Republican League in 1873. Yet despite not being afraid of controversy and firmly owning his republican views, Bradlaugh's The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick addresses the question of republican politics in an oblique fashion.

Charles Bradlaugh by Sydney Prior Hall. National Portrait Gallery: NPG 2313. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

In his preface to the second edition, Bradlaugh stated explicitly: 'This is not ... a Republican pamphlet' (Charles Bradlaugh, The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick. 4th edition. London, 1874, Preface). What he meant by this is that rather than calling for the abolition of the monarchy, he was simply pointing out that the British monarchy is elective and that the British people have the right to choose different rulers should they wish to do so. He based this argument on legislation from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the Parliament of the English Commonwealth, meeting on 25 April 1660, that gave the Crown to Charles II. Similarly, it was the Convention, meeting with all the authority of Parliament, which on 22 January 1688 took the Crown away from James II and passed over his son the Prince of Wales, bestowing the throne instead on James's Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. Furthermore, in various statutes passed under the later Stuarts, the right to accede to the throne was limited, first, to members of the Church of England, and then to the heirs of Princess Sophia of Hanover. Given this history, Bradlaugh insisted, Parliament in his own time had the right, both to deprive a living monarch of the Crown and to treat the heir to the throne as having no claim to the succession.

While Bradlaugh insists that he is not advocating a republican regime, but the replacement of one monarch (or dynasty) by another, his hostility to the Brunswicks is vitriolic. He condemns them for their extravagant expenditure (which he charts in detail), for their hostility to the welfare of the ordinary people, and - more uncomfortably for a twenty-first-century reader - for being foreign. Indeed, what he appears to be advocating is the replacement of the current dynasty - after the death of Queen Victoria - with an English alternative.

Given the history of republican arguments, this position is an interesting one. Bradlaugh is harsh in his condemnation of the Brunswick rulers, but despite admitting his own preference for republican rule, in this work at least he is willing to accept the continuation of the British monarchy under another line.

Alongside his republican writing and campaigning, Bradlaugh was also strongly committed to the issue of land reform. He was involved with the Land Tenure Reform Association, the Land and Labour League and the Commons Protection League and in 1874 he wrote The Land, The People, and The Coming Struggle. Indeed, in the 1870s he presented the Land Question as the key political issue of the day.

James Harrington after Sir Peter Lely, published by William Richardson 1799. National Portrait Gallery: NPG D29116. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Bradlaugh was by no means the first republican to take an interest in land. James Harrington's argument as to why England was ripe for republican government in the mid-seventeenth century was grounded in his theory that land provides the foundation of political power, and that in order to secure allegiance and stability the form of government should fit the distribution of land within the nation. Harrington believed that changes introduced by the Tudor monarchs had brought a shift in land ownership away from the aristocracy and towards commoners. The civil war, on Harrington's account, adjusted politics to the economic reality, making England ripe for republican or commonwealth government. Later republicans accepted Harrington's understanding of the relationship between the ownership of land and the exercise of political power. By the late eighteenth century, Thomas Spence was using Harrington's argument to put a radical case for the abolition of property rights in England and for a sweeping redistribution of land in order to ensure the subsistence of ordinary citizens.

Bradlaugh too saw land as crucial to political power, and he shared Spence's profound concern for the poor. However, his assessment of the situation in his own time was an inversion of Harrington's original theory. 'The bulk of the land', Bradlaugh insisted, 'is in the hands of comparatively few persons, and these monopolise the House of Lords, and materially control the House of Commons.' (Charles Bradlaugh, The Land, The People and The Coming Struggle, 3rd edition. London, 1877, p. 3). Indeed, Bradlaugh insisted that it was actually the aristocracy, rather than the monarch, that exercised real political authority within the country. This had negative consequences not only for politics, but also for subsistence. It was in the interests of landowners to keep rents high and the wages of agricultural workers low, resulting in poverty and poor living conditions for many people. Moreover, members of the aristocracy liked to keep vast swathes of their land uncultivated for their own recreation - for example in the form of grouse moors. This had resulted in 'The diversion of land in an old country from the purpose it should fulfil - that of providing life for the many' to instead providing pleasure for the few. (Bradlaugh, The Land, The People and The Coming Struggle, p. 13). This, Bradlaugh insisted, was a 'crime'. Similarly he described the game laws as 'a disgrace to civilisation' and as proof of the influence of the landed aristocracy over the legislature, and the negative character of that influence. Bradlaugh's solution was not to abolish property rights, as Spence had advocated, but rather to compel landowners to act more responsibly. As he argued in a speech in the House of Commons in 1888: 'the ownership of land should carry with it the duty of cultivation or utilisation'. The authorities should, therefore, 'compel the possessors of land to use it for the general welfare' (Charles Bradlaugh, 'The Compulsory Cultivation of Waste Lands' in Speeches by Charles Bradlaugh, ed. J. M. Roberts, 2nd edition. London, 1895, p. 116). Most of the land may no longer lie with the commoners, but it should still be used for the public good.

Charles Bradlaugh by Harry Furniss, 1880s-1900s. National Portrait Gallery: NPG 3555. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As well as being a founder member of the National Republican League and a member of various land reform groups, Bradlaugh also helped to establish the National Secular Society and acted as its president from 1866 to 1871 and again from 1874 to 1890. Bradlaugh was particularly critical of the hypocrisy of the aristocracy who exploited and crushed the poor for their own ends, but then listened to the sermons of bishops, endowed churches, and talked of the importance of saving souls. Bradlaugh was keen to defend both the truth and the morality of secularism. While uncompromising in his atheism, Bradlaugh made reference back to the more subtle freethinking commonwealthmen of the early eighteenth century. In 1877 he established 'The Freethought Publishing Company'. The notion that this may have been an allusion to Anthony Collins's A Discourse of Freethinking of 1713 is reinforced by the fact that Bradlaugh also wrote his Half hours with the freethinkers under the pseudonym Anthony Collins.

Bradlaugh's philosophy, then, involved a critique of the key institutions of the Crown, the Aristocracy, and the Church. While he addressed these issues separately, he was well aware of the connections and overlap between them, and the threat that all three could pose to the people. Throughout his career Bradlaugh worked to uphold the public good, and to place the interests of ordinary people at the heart of politics, he had every claim to be a republican.

Experiencing Political Texts 7: Intertextuality

It is now several months since I have written a post under the 'Experiencing Political Texts' heading. For that reason alone I wanted to return to it this month, but there is a further incentive for doing so. We learnt in May that our application for an AHRC Networking Grant on this topic has been successful. So, from January 2022 we will be organising a series of workshops exploring the themes: 'Genre and Form in Early Modern Political Texts', 'The Materiality of Early Modern Political Texts', and 'Experiencing Early Modern Political Texts in a Digital Age'. We will also be running a monthly reading group at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society and working with colleagues at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University and at the National Library of Scotland to put on exhibitions exploring the relative merits of print versus digital editions and the forms in which political arguments were articulated in the past and the present.

Screenshot from the Early Modern Ballot resource designed in conjunction with Animating Texts at Newcastle University (ATNU) as a pilot for the ‘Experiencing Political Texts’ project. It provides an animated version of James Harrington’s broadsheet The Manner and Life of the Ballot following the instructions set out in that publication.

In previous posts in this series I have written about the important role played by genre in early modern political texts and about the significance of the material dimensions of those texts. In this post I want to extend the discussion to think about how works were connected with each other: the issue of intertextuality. I should acknowledge here that my thinking on this was greatly influenced by supervising Thomas Whitfield's PhD thesis and, in particular, his work on the 'multi-media strategy' adopted by the radical printer and bookseller Thomas Spence. For those who are interested, you can find out more about Tom's work here.

Joseph Wilton, ‘Thomas Hollis’, marble bust, c.1762. National Portrait Gallery NPG 6946. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Thomas Hollis, who has featured previously in this blog, edited and financed the publication of a number of works on politics and government in the mid-eighteenth century, especially works of the republican canon, producing lavish copies with special bindings, illustrations and coded stamps. Hollis disseminated large numbers of works to city and university libraries across Britain, Europe, and North America. The most extensive collection of these books was sent to Harvard University. This donation, which was added to over many years, was so vast that the electronic library catalogue used at Harvard today is named after Hollis (and his forebears who also made donations to the College). Sending a huge collection of books allowed Hollis to seek to influence how readers read not just a single volume but the collection as a whole.

Hollis added handwritten annotations into a considerable number of the books he sent to Harvard that were designed to direct the reader to other works in the collection. In some cases the aim was to provide more detail on the author. On the flyleaf of Anthony Ascham's Of the confusions and revolutions of governments, for example, he directed readers wanting to know more about Ascham to Antony Wood's Athenae Oxoniensis, volume 2, p. 385, which he had also donated (William H. Bond, “From the Great Desire of Promoting Learning”: Thomas Hollis’s Gifts to the Harvard College Library. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press for the Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library, 2010, p. 39). Elsewhere, however, annotation was intended to provide further reading on the same topic. In William Atwood's Jani anglorum facies nova he directs the reader to 'See "Plato Redivivus", by the ingenuous Harry Neville" (Bond, Thomas Hollis’s Gifts, p. 40). Similarly, on the flyleaf of John Bridges's work, A brief account of many of the prosecutions of the people call'd Quakers, Hollis added the following annotation: 'In "The Pillars of Priestcraft" shaken is preserved a master tract in behalf of the Quakers & of Liberty; which was written by the late Lord Hervey, in answer to an artful tract of the late Dr Sherlock's, then B. of Salisbury, intitled "The Country Parson's Plea'" (Bond, Thomas Hollis’s Gifts, p. 55). Two copies of The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, which was by Hollis's close friend Richard Baron, were also among the works sent to Harvard.

Giovanni Battista Cipriani, ‘Thomas Hollis’, etching, 1767. National Portrait Gallery NPG D46107. Reproduced under a creative commons licence. This portrait of Hollis by Cipriani was produced to appear in his Memoirs. It includes several of the emblems or tools used in the works Hollis commissioned., including the owl and the pileus or liberty cap between two Roman short swords. That combination of symbols appeared on coins issued by Brutus to commemorate the assassination of Julius Caesar.

In both of these cases the works to which the reader was directed expressed similar sentiments to the one in which the annotation appeared, but this was not always the case. On the half-title page of the first volume of The history of the rebellion, Hollis added a rather unflattering description of the author: "Edward Hyde, at length Earl of Clarendon, in the opinion of the writer, so far as he can judge, a hack Lawyer ... of working, but not first-rate abilities; a wordy, partial Historian." He went on to recommend that readers of Clarendon's volume should also read the works of one of his contemporaries: 'See the Prose-works of his opposite, the man, who in no respect, would subscribe slave, the matchless John Milton. T-H aug. 7. 1767" (Bond, Thomas Hollis’s Gifts, p. 67).

The printer and radical bookseller Thomas Spence did not have the resources that were at Hollis's disposal, but he too saw value in encouraging readers to read one text in the light of another, and found a much more direct way of encouraging them to do so. His weekly periodical One Pennyworth of Pig's Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude comprised an eclectic mix of short extracts from works by authors as diverse as the Anglo-Irish cleric and satirist Jonathan Swift, the eighteenth-century reformer William Frend, the political theorist John Locke, and the French philosopher, writer and politician the comte de Volney. The extracts are carefully chosen and important in themselves, but additional messages are conveyed through their juxtaposition. For example, in an early issue Spence included two extracts from Frend's Peace and Union, one dealing with the recent regicide in France, drawing a parallel between it and the events of 1688, and another highlighting the negative impact of war on the poor. They are followed by Lord Chesterfield's letter to his son from April 1752 in which he predicts a decline in the power of kings and priests by the end of the century, on the basis of the 'symptoms of reason and good sense' breaking out in France, which he also links to 'Revolution principles' at home. Together these extracts are designed to encourage readers to view the French Revolution in a positive light and to oppose Britain's involvement in the war against France.

Token produced on Spence’s behalf to advertise his Pig’s Meat publication. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

One of Spence's particular aims in the work is to demonstrate that his arguments for equality, and in particular the fair division of land, are endorsed not just by many of the great political thinkers of the past, but also by the Bible. In another issue he includes two extracts taken respectively from Leviticus and Isaiah followed by a passage from Samuel Pufendorf's Whole Duty of Man. The labels Spence gives to these extracts hints at the connections between them. The Biblical passages are headed 'Lessons for the Monopolizers of Land', while the passage from Pufendorf is entitled 'On Equality'. The extract from Leviticus describes the idea of jubilee whereby every fifty years land that had been bought or sold in the intervening half century would be returned to its original owner. The passage from Isaiah also warned against the accumulation of land. The Pufendorf extract included the following claim: 'That no man, who has not a peculiar right, ought to arrogate more to himself than he is ready to allow to his fellows, but that he permit other men to enjoy equal privileges with himself.' (One Pennyworth of Pig’s Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude. London, 1793, p. 91).

In fact both Hollis and Spence also went beyond intertextuality, making connections not just between one text and another, but also between texts and objects, and between text and place. Both men commissioned the production of images and tokens depicting individuals and emblems that embodied the causes for which they stood. The portrait of Hollis by Giovanni Battista Cipriani and the Spence token advertising his Pig's Meat periodical, both of which are depicted above, are good examples of this. Hollis also became obsessed with John Milton's bed, while Spence experimented with speakeasies and even embarked on a graffiti campaign chalking the words 'The Rights of Man' around the streets of London. Historians of political ideas must, therefore, venture beyond the words on the pages of individual texts if they are to make sense of the politics of the past. I hope that through the 'Experiencing Political Texts' project we will be able to identify fruitful ways of doing this.

Experiencing Political Texts 6: Materiality

We currently find ourselves on a cusp with regard to the materiality of texts. Print copies are still common, but digital editions and open access publishing are on the rise. Yet, for now, the conventions of print tend to provide the framework for digital editions with an emphasis on recreating the look and experience of reading a printed book (for example with 'Turning the Pages' technology) rather than exploring the new possibilities that digital editions might offer.

Despite his experimental use of genre and the blending of fact and fiction, the physical format of Yanis Varoufakis's book Another Now, which I have discussed in previous blogposts in this series, is relatively conventional. It is available in hardback, paperback, as an audio download, and in e-book form with the last of these merely comprising a digital version of the print copy. However, Varoufakis does acknowledge potential innovations in future in his description of what happens when the narrator Yango Varo first opens Iris's diary:

Two red arrows filled my vision as my hybrid-reality contact lenses detected audio-visual content in the diary and kicked in. Instinctively I gestured to switch off my haptic interface and slammed the book shut. Costa had explicitly instructed me to set up the dampening field device before opening the diary. Chastened by my failure to do so, I went to fetch it. Only once the device was on the desk, humming away reassuringly, was I able to delve into Iris's memories in that rarest of conditions - privacy. (Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present. London: Bodley Head, 2019, p. 5).

Title page of Toland and Darby’s edition of The Oceana of James Harrington. Reproduced from the copy at the Robinson Library Newcastle University, BRAD 321 07-TP. I am grateful to the Library staff for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

I have already touched on the materiality of early modern texts in previous blogposts (January 2021, September 2020), but there is more to explore. One area of interest is the way in which the material or physical form of a text was deliberately designed to engage a specific audience. During the eighteenth century the English republican works first published during the mid-seventeenth century were directed, in successive waves, at different audiences and the physical format of those editions varied accordingly. 

Many of the original English republican texts published during the mid to late seventeenth century had been relatively small, cheap editions. When John Toland and John Darby decided to reprint these works at the turn of the eighteenth century, they deliberately reproduced them as lavish folio editions. We know from personal correspondence that they took care to use high quality paper and the title pages often include words in red type, which was more expensive. The size and quality of these volumes makes clear that they were aimed at a high-status audience - particularly members of the political elite. They were destined for their own private libraries or those used by them. While in one sense this was exclusionary - putting these works (and the ideas contained within them) beyond the means of ordinary citizens - there was a positive reason for doing so. Toland and Darby were keen to make clear that, although these texts had been published in the midst of the chaos of the civil war and interregnum, they remained of interest - and of relevance to those in government - even after the restoration of 1660. These works were not mere ephemera, but were of lasting significance and continued relevance in the eighteenth century even though England was no longer ruled as a republic.

Binding of Thomas Hollis’s edition of Harrington’s works. From Houghton Library, Harvard University. HOU GEN *EC65.H2381 656c (B) Lobby IV.2.18. I am grateful to the Houghton Library for giving me permission to reproduce this and to Dr Mark Somos for his assistance.

Thomas Hollis was aware of Toland's publishing campaign and built his own on its foundations. He republished many of the same texts, and again did so in the form of lavish folio volumes with expensive bindings. Hollis commissioned the Italian engraver Giovanni Cipriani to produce portraits of the authors to preface the volumes and to design little emblems that could be embossed onto the front as a key to the nature of the work inside. However, Hollis's dissemination strategy was aimed less at the private libraries of the elite and instead at institutional libraries - public libraries such as those established in cities like Leiden in the United Provinces and Bern in Switzerland, but also the libraries of educational establishments such as Christ's College Cambridge and, most famously, Harvard in the United States. This suggests that Hollis's target audience was less the current political elite than that of the future. His aim was to educate the next generation - especially in America where, from the 1760s, a crisis was brewing.

The American Revolution, when it came, had a significant impact on both sides of the Atlantic. The slogan 'no taxation without representation' flagged up political inequalities in Britain and provided fuel for the incipient reform movement. To further the cause of reform, the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI) was established in 1774. Its main mode of operation was to print cheap copies of political texts which were disseminated freely. In particular, members of the SCI believed it necessary to educate the people on the nature of the British constitution. As the Address to the Public, published in 1780, explained

John Jebb, one of the founder members of the Society for Constitutional Information. Portrait by Charles Knight, 1782. National Portrait Gallery NPG D10782. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As every Englishman has an equal inheritance in this Liberty; and in those Laws and that Constitution which have been provided for its defence; it is therefore necessary that every Englishman should know what the Constitution IS; when it is SAFE; and when ENDANGERED (An Address to the public, from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

The Society focused on printing works that contributed towards this mission, stating that:

To diffuse this knowledge universally throughout the realm, to circulate it through every village and hamlet, and even to introduce it into the humble dwelling of the cottager, is the wish and hope of this Society.

Consequently, the SCI disseminated works such as Obidiah Hulme's Historical Essay on the English Constitution, but also extracts from older works that spoke to these issues. Yet, as the statement of intent makes clear, the Society aimed to disseminate political works not simply among an elite, as their predecessors had done, but throughout the population. This, it was believed, was the best means of awakening people to their rights and thereby furthering the case for the reform of Parliament.

The SCI continued to function into the 1790s and was, therefore, well placed to capitalise on further calls for reform sparked by the outbreak of the Revolution in France in 1789. In this febrile atmosphere, others took up the cause of educating the ordinary people about their rights by making available to them important political texts from past and present.

Spence token advertising Pig’s Meat. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1793 the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence published the first issue of a weekly publication entitled Pig's Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, which printed extracts from political texts including from works that had been republished by Toland and Darby or Hollis. The title was a reference to Edmund Burke's derisory comment in Reflections on the Revolution in France which referred to the ordinary people as swine. Spence's publication cost just 1 penny, making it affordable even for those who were relatively poor, and as he explained on the title page, his aim was '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 unpleased, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages.' Alongside his Pig's Meat publications, Spence engaged in other means of spreading political ideas including writing works of his own and producing and disseminating tokens.

What is the relevance of all this? First, it reminds us that it is not just the content of political works that matters, but also the form in which they are printed, and the way they are disseminated and read. Literary critics like George Bornstein, inspired by Jean Genet and Jerome McGann, have been making this point for some time. But it has yet to fully penetrate the historical investigation of political texts. Secondly, the attempt by authors, editors and reformers to reach ever wider sections of the population during the course of the eighteenth century is striking. It reveals the importance of politics to eighteenth-century British society and the firm belief (at least on the part of some) that political education could and would bring political reform. Is there, I wonder, the same appetite for political knowledge today? What kind of publications would best attract twenty-first century audiences? And what kinds of reform might they propose?