SCIENCE, POLITICS, and RADICAL LITERATURE in ENGLAND of the LATE- 18Th and EARLY - 1 9Th CENTURIES
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"THE NEW PUBLIC SPACE": SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND RADICAL LITERATURE IN ENGLAND OF THE LATE- 18th AND EARLY - 1 9th CENTURIES by John Robert Michael Ames B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1998 THESIS SUBMImDIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of ENGLISH Q JOHN RM AMES 2000 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY December 2000 Al1 rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or Ui part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. uisiüms and Acquisitim et 3.Bi iographic Services services bibliographiques The author has graned a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence ailowing the exclusive permettant à la National Li'brary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriie or selî reproduire, prêter, disûiier ou copies of this thesis in microfq vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fihn,de reproduction sur papier ou sur hmat électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantiiû extracts fiom it Ni la thbse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenvise de ceiie-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits saos son -ssion. autorisation. Cana! This thesis illustrates how reform publishing, scientific ideas (materialist ones), and radical politics intersected during the later part of the eighteenth-century aud helped to give rise to a new public space. Many people, including those whom 1 shall discuss in this study, moved in these publishimg, scientifïc, literary, and politicai worlds. This study traces some of the ways in which the popularization of materialist science altered public opinion and the political world in late eighteenth-century England through the publications and ensuing debates spurred by the period's most prolific reform Iiterature publisher, Joseph Johnson. Joseph Johnson's publishing efforts assisted writers like Erasmus Darwin and John Thelwall (authors directiy and indirectly associated with Johnson's circle of wnters). These authors typified an emergent intersection between radical materialism and radical politics. Their works, like that of many others who wrote about materidist science and politics during the period, illustrate some of the effects scientific ideas (especiaiiy fiom taxonomy, evolution, chemistry, and electricity) had in shaping public opinion. The intersection of this type of literature with the circurnstances and conditioiis of the day helped to radicalize politicai agitation for reform in Britain during the seventeen-nineties. In showing the comection between materialist science and the agitation for social reform, my focus will be on the many fomof dissent seen both in urban and rural areas of Britain. The spread of this dissent-exemplified by mass meetings, publications in the British radical tradition, speeches and pamphlets containing secular ideas, plebeian educational lectures, and through a number of leaders in the London Correspondhg Society and Society for Constitutiond informatioa-captured the interests and minds of the common people. This interest and spread of political education+hmugh polemical works such as Mary WollstonecratYs hdication of the Righfs of Mm and Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revofutim in France-was facilitateci by a profusion of relatively cheap and readily accessible publications made avaihble by publishm like Joseph Johnson. Such publications were cesponsible for helping to educate political auto-didacts like Thomas Hardy, John Home Tooke, Francis Place, and John Thelwail. This particular mix of affodable texts, economic and social conditions, and increasing political iiteracy st this period, made it by and large a pnnt-politics culture. These social forces, dong with the popularization and spread of radical materialist science, helped to shape a new and secularized space where classes intersectecl; and, although political conservatives blamed this spread of secular knowkdge for threatening to overtuni the "moral-foundation" of English social life, this thesis will show that materialist philosophy actually vindicated radical-reform arguments favourable to England's majority. 1 would like to give special thanks to my inunediate Wy,John, Gillian, Michael, and Mary, my good fnends John and Margmt Ahsens, and most of al1 my "long suffering" wife, Katharina, for their patient help throughout the various stages of bringing this thesis to its ha1conclusion. I would also like to thank my supe~sorycornmittee member+present, past, and unofficial-Hannah Gay, JddZaslove, John Whatley, Paul Keen, Ian Dyck, Tirthanker Bose, Michael Lebowitz, Stafford Neal, and Alan Vardy, for their many hours of engaging and inspirational discussions, criticisms, and comrnents in moving this thesis forward to its completion. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS APPROVAL .................................................................................................................ii ... ABSTRACT................................................................................................................ iii DEDECATION ..............................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................ v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................vii INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. I CHAPTER 1 JOSEPH JOHNSON, PATRON OF RADICALS, PUBLISHER OF PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND POLITICS: A REFORMIST NETWORK.. ..................................................................................... 1 2 CHAPTER n REORDERING CREATION: MATERIALISM,MOMSM, AND SCIENTIFIC ICONOCLASM IN LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE ................................................................................ 3 t CHAPTER III EDMUND BURKE, TOM PM,AND THE LONDON CORRESPONDING SOCIETY: THE CONTEST FOR THE GENERAL MTELLECT IN BRITAiN DURING THE 1790s........................................................................ 52 CONCLUSION CONSERVATIVE REACTIONARIES, MATERIALIST-SCIENCE, AND RADICAL LITERATURE M ENGLAND OF THE 1790s.. ................................................................................................ 82 NOTES .......................................................................................................................87 BIBLIOGRAPHY.. ............................................................................... 102 INTRODUCTION The political controversies of the late-eighteenth-century reflect a long-tem historical problem, one aaiculated well by E. P. Thompson and Cbristopher Hill. These historians were trying to understand the agitations, and attempts, by England's common citizenry to regain theu perceived "lost fieedoms" pertaining to civil rights and Common Land expropriations. This study is a micro-historical anaiysis of how these civil rights and "lost fieedoms" problems reemerged during the 1790s when a new plebeian space developed fiom new, and secular, reading practices. This new plebeian space underscored and promoted an emerging biologicd and scientific "materiaiist" view of the naturai world, and consequently was used in a variety of ways to solidify the penod's radical-reform arguments. The nse of "natutal science" aitered the intellectual world when people realized its implications for the social and political spheres. The innumerable variables (social, economic, poIitical) that fuelled the hostile debates between the materialist philosophers of science and the many politicai reactionaries opposed to them in the 1790s, remain to this day not well articulated. It is a common assumption that the French Revolution, and to a lesser extent, the American Revolution, were the primary cause of reactionary fears felt by political conservatives in the latter decades of the eighteenth century in England. However, these revolutions cm only really account for one way of reading the events that actuaily womed politicai conservatives in Great Britain. The revolutions were used as bogies to divert attention away fiom the very teal, and politicaLly explosive domestic problems on home soil. By pointing to the aîrocities of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror, English 2 authorities attempted to portray an illusion of relative stability in Britain, and that this stability would be threatened by any similar political activity. Yet, mucb of what they propagated was sirnply hyperbole without great evidence. In this heady political mix the ernergence of fonnal societies, clubs, and associations gave space and voice to new pupsof people agitating for political representation. These people included pets, publishers, and radicais, such as Thomas Beddoes, William Blake, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Cowper, Erasmus Darwin, Daniel Isaac Eaton, Maria Edgeworth, Benjamin Franklin, William Godwin, Thomas Hardy, Mary Hays, William Hazlitt, Joseph Johnson, Tom Paine, Francis Place, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, John Thelwail, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, and associations like the Birmingham Lunar Society, Society for Constitutional Information, and the London Corresponding Society. Of these 1 will focus especiaily on Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Johnson, Francis Place, and John